


One Step At A Time

by tricia_16



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Blow Jobs, Caretaker Dean Winchester, Dirty Talk, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Frottage, Happy Ending, Homeless Castiel (Supernatural), Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mutual Pining, Oral Sex, Past Aaron Bass/Dean Winchester, Past Daphne Allen/Castiel, Pining, Public Blow Jobs, Sharing a Bed, Top Castiel/Bottom Dean Winchester, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, body image issues, boys not using their words, eileen ships it, keeping secrets, they were roommates, two dicks are better than one
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-22
Updated: 2020-07-15
Packaged: 2021-03-03 20:48:30
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 52,690
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24781822
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tricia_16/pseuds/tricia_16
Summary: When Dean discovers a homeless man sleeping in his basement, he calls the police and has him removed from the premises immediately.Or at least that’s probably what heshouldhave done.Instead, Dean makes the guy soup and winds up falling in love with him a little bit more every day.
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester, Eileen Leahy/Sam Winchester
Comments: 479
Kudos: 1434
Collections: The Destiel Fan Survey Favs Collection, The Profound Network





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hello readers, and welcome to another fic!
> 
> This story is based on a prompt by [a friend of mine](https://twitter.com/EchoAlenia) over on the ProfoundBond Discord server, so you have her to thank for this one!
> 
> As usual, my amazing beta team of [Brianna](https://twitter.com/bookbag09) and [Eliza](https://twitter.com/Darth_Pastry) have been working with me to make sure this story is as polished and easy to read as possible. Any typos or errors you find are all mine, and they were made after they already fixed all the others haha
> 
> This story also includes some INCREDIBLE art by a new friend of mine, [Lindsay](https://www.instagram.com/ladyrandombox_art/). She did this out of the kindness of her heart just to make a shitty situation I fell into seem a little bit better, so if you can please, please, please go drop her a note to thank her and tell her how much you love it (and you will!!!), I would really appreciate it!
> 
> If you've read the tags, you've probably already noticed that we deal with some heavy topics in this fic. There is one thing I've left untagged so I don't spoil the story, and it's a doozy, but I'll warn you before that chapter drops. As usual, you can trust me to deliver with a happy ending, so don't stress too much about that.
> 
> Enjoy! <3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> At the ripe old age of 34, it’s been said that Dean Winchester has the soul of a much older man. He bitches and grumbles about it whenever it comes up, but it’s not like he doesn’t get why people say it. He likes classic rock music, antique cars, pants with elastic waistbands, warm socks, and a solid nine hours on his memory foam mattress every night he can get it. He’s got some quirks that don’t help his case, like sweeping the dirt off of his driveway and being absolutely terrible with technology, and sure, the neighborhood kids might be a little bit afraid of him for how he reacts anytime one of them gets too close to his car, but it’s not like asking nicely the first few times had worked.

A guy’s gotta do what a guy’s gotta do. 

He’s lived alone for four years now, and one of the many things he’s learned about himself in that time (likely brought on by his line of work) is that in order for his mind to slow down enough to fall asleep, he needs to double-check the locks on the front and the back doors every night before bed.

Which is the first time he sees him.

He’s already checked the back door, and because it’s 10PM on a weeknight in a suburban Philadelphia neighborhood, he expects the sidewalk to be empty like it has been every other night he’s lived in this old house for the last six years. So when he looks down one side of the sidewalk and sees it vacant as always, he has no reason to expect to see the man in the tan trench coat on the other side of the sidewalk. 

He startles so much he damn near has a heart attack, gasping aloud as he clutches at his chest where his heart is going a mile a minute. As his brain catches up with the rest of him and he realizes he’s not actually in danger from the man on the other side of the locked door walking away from him, his heart rate starts to slow down. He chuckles breathlessly at himself, shaking his head at how much he overreacted and how his buddies at work would never let him hear the end of this if they saw it.

The truth is, there’s no reason to be so startled by a man in a disgustingly dirty trench coat walking down the sidewalk other than he just plain didn’t expect to see him. Nonetheless, he watches as the man walks to the end of the block and then disappears into the darkness before Dean flips off the light on his front porch and heads up the stairs. 

He’s more careful the next few nights he checks the locks and flips off the outdoor lights, but by the time a couple of weeks has gone by, he’s pretty much forgotten all about it. One day after the other, he works his 9-5, comes home, cooks dinner, eats it in front of the television, tends to his yard and his car, and goes to bed just to do the same thing again the next day. He usually talks to his brother once a day, and he has a few friends he sees every now and then, but he’s pretty much a homebody and he likes it that way.

It’s a cold, rainy Thursday morning when he gets a text from Sam asking if he knows where Sam’s high school yearbook is. Apparently his wife, Eileen, has found hers, and they want to compare yearbook quotes. He’s still got ten minutes before he has to leave for work, so he heads down into the basement to go through the old boxes of Sam’s stuff that was left behind when Sam moved away. He knows which stack of boxes it’s in, but it takes him a couple of minutes of unstacking and rifling through them to find the yearbook. He sets the yearbook down on the ground and goes to restack the boxes, which is when he sees something move out of the corner of his eye.

Once again, he startles so hard he almost drops the box, but he manages to catch himself just in time to recover. It’s a damn good thing, too, since the man in the trench coat is currently curled up on a threadbare blanket in the corner of his goddamn basement.

If it wasn’t for the steady rise and fall of the man’s body indicating his breathing, Dean would think the guy is dead. His hair is a greasy, unkempt mess, and even in the shadows of the early morning light in the basement, Dean can see from where he stands that the man is gaunt.

_Homeless._

Dean’s eyes skirt the walls of the basement, landing on the single window the man must have used to get in, and after thinking about how desperate a man would have to be to climb through a basement window to find shelter, he goes with his gut. He puts the box back where it goes, grabs the yearbook, and walks back up the stairs as quietly as he can. He has an eye hook lock on the basement door, so he puts that in place, and then stands there and stares at the closed door for several long seconds.

Logically, he knows he should do something. He should confront the man and ask him to leave. He could offer to drive him to a shelter so he doesn’t have to be stuck out in the rain. But the guy could also be a druggie or something, all hyped up on who knows what, so it probably isn’t the best idea to wake the guy up when he isn’t expecting it.

He should call the police. _That’s_ what he should do. It’s not his job to deal with random homeless strangers who are squatting in his house, that’s what people pay the police three times his salary for. He nods his head, mind made up, and turns away from the door to do just that. But when another text from Sam comes in, he snaps the picture of his yearbook and sends it along, then grabs his lunch on the way out the door without ever dialing the local police station.

He rethinks his decision a hundred different times while he works his shift, but when he gets home at dinner time with a new deadlock in hand and sneaks his way down the stairs, the man is gone without even the threadbare blanket remaining. Without thinking about why he’s doing what he’s doing, he goes back up the stairs to the spare room and retrieves a couple of old blankets, then brings them to the basement and leaves them in a pile on top of some boxes. Noticing how fucking cold it is down here for the first time, he goes back to a closet on the main floor and brings a sleeping bag down too, but puts it in a box, hoping it doesn’t look too obvious. 

He installs the new, more sturdy lock on the basement door and then makes himself dinner, trying and failing not to think about when the last time the guy who sleeps in his basement had a warm meal. Over the next couple of weeks, Dean brings more and more extra stuff down there “not” for the homeless guy. He brings down an old backpack with a couple of stray granola bars in the bottom of it, some canned tuna, some jerky, and a couple big bottles of water. With any luck, the man will think Dean’s preparing for the end of the world or something and will be too hungry to resist the free food he’s leaving down there for him.

He spends a lot of time wondering if he’s really doing anybody any favors by helping the man out, but long-ago memories of his own stomach being so empty it actually ached has him dismissing those thoughts each and every time. He might not be doing the smart thing, but he isn’t hurting anybody. If he winds up getting robbed, well, he can’t say he didn’t see it coming. He knows the risks. He’s thought about them, weighed them in his mind more times than he can count, and every time he’s sure he’s come to the conclusion that he’s going to turn the homeless man into the authorities... there’s just something that makes him turn a blind eye to it all.

What’s one more day?

What’s a week?

... what’s one more week?

Before he knows it, a month has gone by, and with it, even the _idea_ of warmth. He knows the man will freeze to death if he keeps living in the basement, and it seems every spare moment is filled with thoughts of where the man is going to go and what he’s going to do. So it’s no surprise that the first morning in January he wakes up to a sheet of white covering the ground, his very first thought goes to the man in the basement.

His old house is already colder than it should be, and he cranks the heat as much as he can afford while he putters around the house fixing breakfast, all the while worrying about the man downstairs. When the sun doesn’t melt the snow by mid-afternoon, he puts on boots and a coat to shovel the driveway. While he’s out there, he checks around the side of the house for footprints to make sure the homeless man has left for the day. When he doesn’t see any, he goes to the worst-case scenario in his head and immediately starts panicking over how he’s going to explain a dead homeless dude camped out in his basement. 

Which is exactly why he winds up trudging down the stairs in the middle of the day. He makes sure to walk as loudly as possible, giving the man as much time to prepare for his impending arrival as he can, so to say he’s surprised to see the man still on his side and not moving by the time he reaches the bottom of the stairs is the understatement of the century.

The guy has an old coat of Dean’s on with the hood up over his head, he’s inside the sleeping bag with a stack of blankets on top of that, and even from ten feet away, Dean can see the way the man is shivering. But even that takes a backseat to the jolt of absolute shock when the man opens his eyes, looking dazed but unquestionably right at him. The man doesn’t react at all, but as Dean takes an involuntary step closer, he can see a sheen of sweat on his face, which might explain the way his eyes are glassed over.

It could still be drugs. He knows that. But his gut tells him it isn’t, and since this guy’s been staying here every day for more than a month and still takes the time to roll up the sleeping bag and put the blankets away every single night, Dean’s inclined to think he’s not completely out of his mind.

So he takes a chance.

“You okay, buddy?” Dean asks, taking care to keep his voice quiet and soothing.

“I—” It’s cold enough down here that Dean can see the way the man’s breath puffs into the air with that one syllable. Then his eyes go wide with shock, and Dean knows the guy has really snapped out of whatever spell he was under a second ago. “I-I’m s-sorry. I-I didn’t take anything. I-I’m not d-dangerous. It’s j-just... s-so cold.”

His voice is barely more than a whisper, low and rough, and Dean’s heart twists with empathy. This guy can’t be _that_ bad if the first thing he did when he got caught was apologize, right? So Dean does what he’s been doing all along, and goes with the initial instinct to help. 

“Can you stand?”

The man nods, slowly sitting up and pulling the pile of blankets more closely around him once he’s fully seated. “I-I think so. Please d-don’t call the cops. I’ll go.”

“You can go if you want,” Dean says carefully. “But I’ve got some soup on the stove and a loaf of bread that just came out of the oven if you want to have some of that before you hit the road again.”

The man blinks, then shakes his head slightly, as if trying to decide if he’s dreaming or not. “You want to give me soup?”

“Figure it’s a better alternative than explaining the dead guy in my basement.” Having a homeless man looking at him like he’s the weird one here has him ruffling the hair at the back of his neck nervously. “Look, if you wanna go out the window again, I get it. I’ll leave it open in case you need to come back. But if you decide you want to warm up with a bowl of homemade soup, well, I’ve got plenty, and it’s just me up there.” 

And then Dean turns his back on the homeless man and walks back up the stairs, wondering with every step he takes if he’s lost his goddamn mind.

He has the bread sliced and a bowl full of soup for himself on the small kitchen table when he hears the scuffling sounds of shoes on the basement stairs. He would have bet that the guy was going to bail, but apparently not. Dean grabs a second bowl and fills it as much as he possibly can, then places it on the table across from his own. Not wanting to seem too threatening but still wanting to keep an eye on the guy, he takes the seat facing the stairs and starts slathering some butter on his bread while he waits for the man to make it up the stairs. 

By the time he does, the man is breathing like he ran a marathon, red-faced and sweating. Dean notes that the man still forces his spine to straighten out as he stumbles with as much grace as he can muster towards the table where he takes the empty seat with a grimace full of pain. The first words out of his mouth are, “Thank you for your kindness.”

And that’s when the smell hits him. Pungent enough to permeate the scent of fresh baked bread and homemade chicken noodle soup, the body odor and uncleanliness of the man across from him nearly rolls his stomach. 

“Least I could do,” Dean says, trying not to breathe through his nose. “Eat up, but uh, word from the wise? Don’t inhale it too fast or it’ll just come back up.”

The man nods shakily, and replies, “Sounds like you know from experience.”

“Yeah,” Dean answers, voice gruff. The man picks up his spoon, then leans in over his bowl, which is a good thing considering how badly his hand is shaking. “You sick, or just hungry?” Dean hears himself ask. 

“Sick, I’m afraid,” the man responds. “Just a cold, I’m sure.” He eats another spoonful of soup and closes his eyes like he’s savoring it. Dean watches him curiously, scrutinizing his face for any clue about what kind of man this guy is, staring so intently that he’s pinned in place when the guy’s eyes suddenly pop open again to reveal the bluest eyes he’s ever seen. “I realize it may be the circumstances, but this is the best soup I’ve ever had. Thank you.”

“It’s an old family recipe,” Dean says. “It really is that good.”

The man’s lips turn up in the corners, like he wants to smile but doesn’t quite remember how, and then he’s going in for more. 

“Bread?” Dean asks. 

“If you have some to spare, that would be wonderful,” the man answers. Dean starts buttering a slice, then slides it across the table so he can reach it. Neither of them say anything else while they work on their food, and although Dean had warned the man to take it easy, he finishes long before Dean. Dean gets him another slice of bread while he’s finishing up, and they continue to eat in silence until both bowls are empty. 

They seem to look at each other at the same time, both unsure what to do next now that they’ve finished eating. Dean says the first thing that comes to mind. “Do you want to take a shower?”

The man’s eyes widen in surprise, but then he drops his gaze and says, “If it wouldn’t be too big of an intrusion, I would appreciate that more than I can say.”

“You okay to walk down the hall, or are you going to keel over on me?” Dean checks. 

“I can walk down the hall,” the man responds. 

“Wait here for a sec and I’ll go grab you some stuff,” Dean instructs him. He has a vague thought as he walks away that this would be the perfect chance for the man to steal something if he wanted to, but honestly, he looks like a good gust of wind could knock him over, so Dean’s not too worried about it. 

He grabs a towel, a fresh bar of soap, and a little travel size bottle of shampoo... then adds a second one when he thinks of just how messy the dude’s hair looked. He gets a disposable razor and some shaving cream in case the guy wants to shave, then as he thinks about the guy being all clean for the first time in who knows how long and getting back in those stinky, dirty clothes, he goes up the stairs and rifles through his dresser until he finds a pair of lounge pants with a drawstring, a long-sleeve t-shirt, and a hoodie. He wavers for a minute about whether it’s weird or not, but ultimately takes a pack of boxers still in the plastic from last Christmas and adds them to the pile of stuff, too. 

He carries it all down to the bathroom on the main floor, then walks back down the hallway to where the man is still sitting at the table. It doesn’t look like he’s moved a muscle at first, but Dean notices there are two fewer slices of bread remaining than there was when he left. 

His eyes must linger on the loaf too long because the man immediately launches into an apology. “I’m sorry. It was just sitting here and I’m still so hungry. You were so kind to me and I shouldn’t have eaten it without—”

“Hey, take a breath,” Dean says. “Plenty more where that came from, alright? Being hungry ain’t a crime.” The man drops his gaze again, but Dean can see the way he’s blinking back tears. He wonders when the last time somebody spoke to this man with kindness was, and then shakes off the thought when it makes him feel weird inside. 

“I got you all set up with everything you’ll need. I put a spare set of clothes out too, so if you want, I can wash what you’re wearing while you’re in the shower so you can change back into them once you’re all cleaned up. If you wanna stay in what you’re wearing, that’s fine too, just thought you might want the option.”

The man stares at him with his eyebrows drawn together, confusion etched into every line of his dirty face. “Why are you doing this?”

Taken aback by the question, Dean replies, “Being nice?”

“Yes,” the man says. “I don’t have anything to give you in return.”

“Believe it or not, I kinda figured that out on my own,” Dean says back, not bothering to hide his sarcastic tone. “It’s cold out, you’re hungry and sick, and no offence, buddy, but you smell pretty rank.” The man looks insulted, and he has a feeling if his face wasn’t already flushed from the fever he probably has, he would be burning with embarrassment. “Since I’m not about to kick you back out into the snow seeing as you obviously have no place to go, I figured it would make things a hell of a lot more pleasant for both of us if you had a shower and put on some clean clothes. Okay?”

The man still seems suspicious, but it seems he’s willing to take Dean at his word. “A shower would be... better than you know. Thank you.”

Dean leads the way down the hall, then gestures for the guy to go inside. “Everything you need’s right there on the counter. Take as much time as you want, the hot water tank in this house is a beast. Oh, and if I forgot anything that might make you feel more comfortable, just holler and I’ll see what I can do.”

The man nods. “What should I holler?”

“Hm? Oh!” Dean exclaims, realizing what he meant a second too late. “I’m Dean. Welcome to my humble abode.”

“I’m Castiel, and thank you again, Dean.”

Dean bobs his head once, gestures to the shower, and says, “Enjoy,” before he walks back down the hallway. 

Castiel (and what the hell kind of name _is that,_ anyway?) definitely takes his advice about taking his time in the shower. It’s almost thirty minutes before the water turns off, and at least as long before he hears the sound of the bathroom door opening. He’s actually relieved to hear it, because he was starting to worry that Castiel either passed out or shot up or something, but when he sees the other man timidly walk into the kitchen where Dean’s doing the dishes, he realizes it really might have taken that long to get clean. 

The man standing in front of him is almost unrecognizable, and if it wasn’t for the fact that Dean _knows_ the front and back doors are locked, he would think this is a totally different guy than who went into the bathroom. Upon closer inspection, he can tell that the too-blue eyes are the same, and the way his cheeks are sunken in from not having enough food for too long hasn’t changed from a shower, but the shave and the lack of filth in his hair and on his face has made a noticeable difference. Hell, if Castiel were wearing clothes that fit and put on a good 30 pounds, he’d probably be handsome, and he sure as shit hadn’t been able to tell that before he showered.

“Look at you,” he chuckles, drying his hands on the dish towel. “You look like a whole new man. How do you feel?”

“There aren’t even words to explain how much better I feel,” Castiel says, breathless with gratitude. “I feel _human_ for the first time in so long I almost forgot how it felt. I really can’t thank you enough for this.”

“It’s nothing,” Dean insists. He nods to the pile of clothes in Castiel’s hands and says, “You wanna wash those?”

“More than you know.” He pushes his hand through his still damp hair and looks at the floor as he continues to speak. “I, uhm, didn’t realize how bad they smelled until I got myself clean. I’m sorry for bringing the smell into your kitchen.”

He seems so embarrassed by it that Dean feels his heart go out to the poor guy. “Not like you could help it, and nothing a little air freshener couldn’t fix,” Dean says with a shrug, trying to breeze past the awkward moment for both of them. “Come on, I’ll show you where the washing machine is.” They get Castiel’s clothes in there and the machine turned on, but by then Castiel is sweating again and it seems like he’s going to keel over on him any second. Dean beckons him to follow him towards the living room and gestures for him to take a seat. “Might as well take a load off. Do you want some ibuprofen or acetaminophen for your fever?”

Castiel stays standing, but squints his eyes. “You think I have a fever?”

“Unless there’s some other reason you’re shaking and sweating?” Dean asks, trying not to sound too judgmental. 

“I’m not on drugs, if that’s what you’re asking.” Dean nods, and Castiel says, “If it’s no trouble, ibuprofen would be welcome.”

Dean grabs him a few along with a bottle of water, then hands them to him and plops down on the couch. “I don’t wanna tell you what to do, but you really look like you could use a seat.”

Castiel seems to hesitate, but does eventually sit on the other end of the only couch Dean has. “I don’t want to be rude, but I... I don’t understand what’s happening here.”

Dean nods a little, understanding his disbelief. “Honestly, even I have no freaking clue what I’m doing, man.” He shrugs, then tries to explain the best he can. “It’s cold outside and you don’t have any place to go. I can’t just kick you out in the snow knowing you’re sick, because I know myself well enough to know I’ll spend the rest of my life wondering if you died because of me.”

“Nobody else seems to care,” Castiel says quietly. “Sometimes I’m not even sure if I do.”

And _that_ is a lot to unpack from a stranger. “Well, until you decide if you do or not, you can hang out here with me.”

Castiel looks down at the ground again, making Dean wonder if there’s something about him that makes Castiel unwilling to look him in the face, or if he’s just so used to trying to be invisible that he automatically drops his gaze. “What would you have us do?”

Dean had some running around he was planning on doing this afternoon, but since he’s not a fan of the snow and he now has a homeless man he’s offered to entertain, he guesses he better come up with something. He says the first thing he can think of when it comes to killing a whole bunch of time. “Do you like Star Wars?”

“I’ve never seen it.”

Dean’s jaw legitimately drops. “You’ve _never_ seen Star Wars? Are you Amish or something?”

“No, I’m not Amish,” Castiel says, sounding reluctantly amused. “I figure I already know the big plot twist, so what’s the point?”

“What’s the point?” Dean repeats, incredulous. “What’s the point of having sex when you know how it ends, or making a fancy meal you know you’re just gonna eat?” he counters. Before Castiel can answer, he says, “The point is, it’s not always about the destination, man. Sometimes it’s about the journey.”

“Sometimes it’s about the journey,” Castiel echoes, looking thoughtful. 

Suddenly realizing that might not be the best thing to say to a man who currently has one set of clothes and nowhere to live, he decides to skirt past that and dive into the movie. “Well, it’s a good thing you picked my basement to crash in after all, because you’re about to get an education, buddy. Get comfortable, and we’ll watch the first one if you want.”

He turns on Disney Plus and glances over at Castiel to see what he thinks since he hasn’t said anything, and notices he has his arms around himself, shivering slightly. Without a word, he grabs the blanket folded up on the back of the couch and tosses it Castiel’s way. He sees Castiel cover himself up out of the corner of his eye, and the two of them settle in to watch the movie. 

Less than thirty minutes in, Castiel is fast asleep. 

He figures the guy must need his rest, so he leaves him be while he switches the laundry over and watches the movie on his own, resigned to rewatching it once more whenever Castiel can stay awake long enough. Castiel sleeps straight through for four hours, and when he wakes, it’s with a start.

He sits straight up, gasping for air, his head turning side-to-side in rapid succession.

“Hey,” Dean says, keeping his voice low and soothing. “You okay?”

Castiel’s gaze locks on him, and Dean can see the moment he realizes where he is and how he got here. Castiel sighs heavily, running both hands over his face until he seems to have himself back together. “I apologize. I didn’t mean to fall asleep like that.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Dean says. “I was waiting for you to wake up because I was thinking about ordering pizza in for dinner. You like pizza?”

“I eat anything these days,” Castiel responds.

“Yeah, but do you _like_ pizza?” Dean asks.

“Everybody likes pizza.”

Dean cracks a smile. “That’s the spirit. What do you like on your pizza?”

“I’m really not picky,” Castiel tries. Dean only lifts his eyebrows, and Castiel’s lips twitch at the corners before he replies, “In a dream world, as much meat and cheese as I can pile on top of it.”

“I think we just became best friends,” Dean jokes. He reaches for the phone on the end table next to the couch and calls in an order for two medium pizzas and some cheesy bread, then kicks his feet up on the coffee table in front of him. “Be about a half hour.”

“You didn’t have to do that. I don’t expect you to feed me, and I certainly don’t have any money to contribute.”

“I know,” Dean says simply. “But while you were sleeping I was wondering what kinds of food I’d be craving if I hadn’t had them in a while. I landed on burgers and pizza, but burgers are always better at a restaurant and I don’t wanna go anywhere, so that’s why I went with pizza tonight.”

“It’s been... longer than I can remember since I ate at a restaurant.”

“Do you remember the last place you went?”

Castiel looks so stricken so rapidly that between one second and the next, his bottom lip is trembling and his hands are starting to shake. “I wish I didn’t,” Castiel chokes out.

“Okay. We don’t have to talk about that, then,” Dean says quickly, immediately regretting asking in the first place. “Do you ever have any crazy cravings or anything, though? Anything. Beer, turkey dinner, tacos?”

“I actually have a fondness for burgers as well,” Castiel admits, still looking shaken but obviously trying to move past whatever had him so upset only a few seconds ago. “And fresh fries, still hot from the fryer.”

“There’s a great place a couple of blocks away. We’ll have to go sometime.” The second the words are out of his mouth, it’s awkward again. Because it’s not like they’re friends who can just hang out, and obviously Castiel doesn’t have the cash to go and get a bite to eat, but it’s too late to take it back now. 

“Yeah,” Castiel says, looking down at his knees again.

“How’s the, uh, fever coming?” Dean asks, not-so-smoothly changing the subject. “You feeling any better?”

“A meal always helps,” Castiel replies. “I feel better now than I have in months. I’m also not sweating so much, which I assume is thanks to the ibuprofen. And you.”

“How long have you been sick?” he asks quietly, hoping the question doesn’t have anything to do with what made him so upset before.

“Honestly, time kind of loses meaning after a while. I’m not really sure. It doesn’t seem like too long,” he adds. “It’s not that bad.” Dean doesn’t believe that for a second, but he nods his head all the same. “May I ask...” But then he stops, shaking his head.

Dean chuckles. “You can ask pretty much anything. I’m almost impossible to offend.”

“I just can’t help but notice that you seem to live alone.”

“Yeah,” Dean says, glancing around aimlessly. “Lived with my brother until he got married, but he moved out a couple of years ago.”

“No significant other for you?” Castiel asks.

Dean shakes his head. “Nope. Found lots of right nows but no forevers, you know?”

Castiel nods, but Dean can tell that he doesn’t. “It must be lonely on your own.”

“I keep pretty busy,” Dean says, as if he doesn’t hate falling asleep and waking up alone every damn day with a passion. “By the time I get home from work, cook and clean up after myself during the week, I’m beat enough that I’m happy to sit in front of the TV for a bit before getting ready for bed. On weekends, there’s errands, maintenance for my car, and yard work to keep me from going crazy.” Castiel smiles a little, and Dean zeroes in on it like a lifeline. “What’s that look for?”

“It’s silly, but I was just thinking how much I don’t miss mowing the lawn.”

“Not an outdoorsy kinda guy?”

“No,” Castiel answers. “And now?” He laughs bitterly. “If I never stepped foot outside again, I would be more than okay with that.”

“This is probably a stupid question, but why don’t you stay in a shelter or whatever?”

“Different reasons for different shelters. Some have a limit for how long you can stay. Some have requirements of employment. Some are so satiated with drugs that I couldn’t sleep on a mattress without worrying about getting poked with a used needle that was left lying around. The sad truth is that in some cases, I was safer sleeping on the street. And of course, some are just full, and because I’m young, a male, and relatively healthy, I’m not a big priority.”

Dean shakes his head, trying to make sense of that. “That sucks, man. Seems like there should be more resources available.”

Castiel shrugs a single shoulder. “I’m alive. It’s more than some people. It wasn’t really all that bad until Fall started creeping in. You don’t realize just how cold it gets here at night when you’re tucked into your nice warm bed.” Then he lifts his gaze to Dean’s and says, “I slept better on your couch just now than I have in months. Actually, you’ve done more for me than anybody has in a very long time. I hope that when I leave here later tonight, your conscience is clear.”

“You got somewhere you gotta be?” Dean wonders.

“I assumed I wouldn’t be welcome to sleep in your basement now that you know I’ve been... well, breaking in to do so,” Castiel says, looking ashamed again. “I’m sorry about that, by the way. I know I shouldn’t have, that it was wrong, but it seemed like the best option at the time.”

“I don’t blame you for doing what you had to do to get by,” Dean tells him. “Apology accepted.”

Castiel shakes his head slightly. “I keep waiting for you to demand something from me that I’m not going to be able to provide, and you keep being unnaturally kind.”

Dean snorts a laugh. “Believe me, it’s new for me, too.”

“You mean you don’t typically take in homeless people?” Castiel asks, one corner of his mouth lifting into a smile. 

“I’m sorry, was that a joke?” Dean asks. Castiel rolls his eyes a little, but there’s still a hint of a smile ghosting around his mouth. “Didn’t think you had it in you, man.”

“Well, there hasn’t been much to laugh about recently. In fact, this might be the longest conversation I’ve had since... since,” he finishes. “I forgot how nice it could be.”

“That’s me,” Dean says blandly. “Conversational wizard.” He’s amused by the idea so much that he asks, “Actually, can I get that on video so I can prove to my brother that somebody actually said that to me?”

“I’m not exactly in a position to turn you down,” Castiel says.

Dean’s smile falls immediately. “Dude, no. If I ask you to do something, you can say no. I’m not gonna kick you out if you don’t want to do a video or, I don’t know, don’t like my cooking or something. I’m not a total asshole.”

“I’m not a big fan of technology,” Castiel admits. 

Dean cracks a smile. “You and me both. Only reason I cart my cell phone around is because of Sam.”

“Is that your brother?” Castiel asks. 

“Yeah. Little brother.”

“You must talk often if he’s the only reason you have a cell phone.”

“We do,” Dean confirms. Then, feeling like he needs to explain a little more, he continues somewhat awkwardly. “My dad was never around much, so it was always kinda him and me, y’know?”

Castiel nods his head sadly. “You must miss him a lot after living together for so long.”

“Was nice to have the company,” Dean says, hoping he’s not _too_ obvious about the gaping hole his brother left in his life once he moved away. 

“I’m an only child,” Castiel says. Dean doesn’t miss that it’s the first personal piece of information he’s shared besides his name, but he doesn’t react much either, not wanting to scare him off. “I always hoped for a sibling, but never got one. What’s it like?”

“Like a built-in best friend you want to strangle about half the time,” Dean replies. Because Castiel almost smiles at that, he goes on to tell him what it was like growing up with Sam, and winds up yapping the poor guy’s ear off by bragging about how smart he is, how well he did in school, how he’s a lawyer at a fancy law firm who specializes in disability rights. 

If it wasn’t for the doorbell ringing, he knows he would have kept going too, but they’re interrupted by the arrival of the pizza. Dean grabs a couple of beers from the fridge on his way by, then puts one box and one bottle in front of Cas on the coffee table, and the second in front of himself. 

“Dig in,” he says, twisting the top off of his beer. 

“It smells unbelievable,” Castiel comments. “I might have missed this more than I let myself think about.”

“Well, don’t go full hog. If you haven’t eaten much lately, something like this is gonna run right through you.” 

Castiel grimaces. “That’s an unpleasant thought.”

“Least you have a bathroom you can use.” 

Castiel smiles a little, just the faintest little lift of his lips, and picks up his bottle of beer to pop the top. “Cheers to that,” he quips. 

Dean taps their bottles together with a smile of his own, then takes a long pull from his beer, nodding as it goes down nice and smooth. 

“I missed beer,” Castiel admits, smiling at his bottle. “Honestly, this is one of the best days I can remember in recent months. I’m still not entirely sure it’s not a fever dream.”

Dean snorts a laugh as he grabs a slice of pizza, passing it hand to hand as it burns the tips of his fingers. “Don’t you think you’d dream up something better than slumming it with me?”

Castiel looks at his knees again, seeming shy all of the sudden, and replies, “I don’t know. Perhaps.” But his shyness seems to disappear as quickly as it started when he takes his first bite of his pizza and moans around it. “Oh my _god,”_ he says, covering his mouthful with his hand. 

“Good, right?”

“Amazing,” Castiel confirms. “Thank you again, Dean. Truly.” 

“Least I could do,” Dean says. And because he’s uncomfortable with all of the insistent gratitude, he says, “And you don’t have to thank me every thirty seconds. I know you appreciate it.”

“I’m sure you don’t, but I’ll try to remember not to say it every time I think it.” 

Dean figures that’s really as much as he can ask for, so he bobs his head in response and turns his attention back to the TV. “What do you want to watch?”

Castiel shrugs as he chews on the bite currently in his mouth. Once he swallows, he replies, “I never watched much television. Watch whatever you’d usually watch, and I’m sure I can catch up.”

Figuring he’s not going to get much clap back from Castiel of all people, he goes back to his Dr. Sexy, MD rewatch. He’s probably been all the way through all seven seasons five times by now, but it’s comforting to watch the same over-the-top storylines play out knowing where they’re going to lead. He’s only about mid-way through season two, so Castiel won’t have much to catch up on anyway. 

Castiel stays quiet as the recap starts, but the second the title card pops up, he fails spectacularly at stifling a laugh. 

Dean narrows his eyes and pins him with a hard look that he doesn’t really mean. “You got a problem with Dr. Sexy, Castiel?”

Castiel’s eyes are dancing with laughter when he shakes his head. “No, not at all. I just wouldn’t have suspected that you’re the kind of guy who watches soap operas.”

“It’s not a soap opera,” he says automatically, even though he knows it sorta is. “It’s a drama.”

“My mistake,” Castiel says, and although his voice is even, he can just _tell_ Castiel is humoring him. 

“Okay wise guy, but I bet you anything you’re sucked in before you get to the end of the second episode.”

Although Castiel didn’t officially _take_ the bet, they both know Dean’s won when Castiel audibly gasps when the love of Dr. Sexy’s life kisses another man. They watch three episodes, and before he knows it, it’s well past midnight and he and Castiel are both torn between struggling to stay awake and wanting to watch more. 

“But the cliffhanger!” Castiel complains after Dean suggests they call it a night. 

“Spoiler alert, Cas, but they all end on cliffhangers.”

“That’s... genius, actually,” he seems to realize. 

Dean sits up a little, indulging in a little stretch. “So, do you wanna camp out on the couch or sleep in the spare room?”

Castiel merely blinks at him. “Are you serious?”

“Of course I’m serious,” Dean says, offended by the question. “You think I’m a big enough dick that I’d ask a homeless guy to spend the night and then go, _sike!?”_

“No, of course not,” Castiel says quickly. “But we’re total strangers. How do you know I’m not... a drug addict or a murderer or that I’m not going to rob you in your sleep?”

“I don’t,” Dean admits. “But I didn’t know that when I was letting you sleep in the basement either, and as far as I know, you didn’t take anything when you were down there. Plus, not to sound like a douche, but you were breathing so hard just walking up a flight of stairs I wasn’t sure if you were going to make it all the way up. So it’s not like you’re gonna rip my TV off the wall and carry it out on your back.”

“I would never anyway,” Castiel says. “I won’t touch a thing without permission.”

“Nah, feel free to help yourself to food or drinks, more Ibuprofen if you need it, or grab a book or watch TV or whatever,” Dean says. “There’s no TV in the spare room, and it’s got a pretty old bed, but—”

“I’m sure it’s better than anywhere I’ve slept for a very long time,” Castiel says, cutting him off with a smile. “If you’re sure you’re comfortable with it, I would _love_ to sleep in a room of my own for once.” As soon as he says it, he just about trips over himself trying to take it back. “Not that I think it’s _my_ room. I realize it’s just a one-time thing, I didn’t mean to imply otherwise.” He sighs heavily, pushing a hand through his hair again. “I swear you’re not going to have to carry me out of here kicking and screaming tomorrow morning if you let me stay tonight. Despite all appearances, I am quite sane.”

Dean huffs a laugh at that, but gets to his feet and says, “Let’s see how tonight goes, okay? You can use the bathroom down here to keep your stuff in it, like the tooth brush and stuff I gave you before, but the spare room is upstairs next to mine. I have a bathroom of my own, but it’s an en-suite so—”

“I won’t intrude in your personal space anymore than I already have. You don’t have to worry about offending me; I understand.”

Dean nods, breathing easier now that he’s said that. “Thanks. I’m gonna put the rest of the pizza in the fridge and make sure the doors are locked, so if you wanna go use the bathroom now, then I can get you set up upstairs.”

“I can do that. Th—” He stops himself midway through his thank you, ducks his head, and gets up to walk down the hallway with what Dean’s sure is a smile on his face. 

A few minutes later, they put their plan into action, and Dean is handing Castiel a fresh stack of sheets Castiel insists on putting on himself. He hovers in the doorway for a minute, feeling a lot weirder about somebody other than Sam staying in his place for the first time than he thought he would, but determined to shake it off.

“If you need anything, feel free to wake me up. And uh, seriously don’t die overnight, because that’s not going to look any better for me now than if you kicked the bucket in the basement.”

Castiel breathes through a small laugh, and replies, “I’ll do my best. And I know I promised I wouldn’t keep saying it, but thank you. Truly.”

His blue eyes are way too open and honest for Dean to see anything but genuine, endless gratitude inside of them, and it’s so much for so little that it has Dean’s insides feeling all jumbled up and weird. He clears his throat like a goddamn idiot, and mumbles something along the lines of, “You’re welcome. Have a good sleep.”

“You, too. Goodnight, Dean.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Today is my good friend’s birthday, so I thought I would surprise her with a new chapter a few days early 🥳
> 
> It’s a long one, so strap in, get comfy, and enjoy!

Dean wakes the next morning just before ten. As usual, his first thought is coffee, so he empties his bladder, swishes around some mouthwash, and stumbles blearily down the hallway onto the main floor. He’s about half way down the stairs when he remembers Castiel stayed here last night, and he runs a hand through his hair to deal with the worst of his bedhead as he looks to make sure none of his stuff is missing. His TV is still on the wall and his cell phone is where he left it on the end table, but Castiel isn’t in the living room. 

He finds him in the kitchen, standing in front of the stove. Castiel must hear the scuff of his feet, because he turns to hit him with an uncertain smile. “Good morning. Do you like pancakes?”

“Coffee,” Dean grunts, moving past him to grab a mug out of the cupboard. He puts it in place, finds a K-Cup, gets it in the Keurig, hits the button, and waits. Thank  _ god _ Castiel can take a hint, because he doesn’t bug him again until Dean’s fixed himself his coffee and dragged his ass to the kitchen table where he carefully walks the line between drinking it as quickly as humanly possible and not burning holes through his tongue and throat.

Only then does Dean answer Castiel’s question. “Yeah, pancakes’re good.”

And so he finds himself drinking his coffee while Castiel cooks, and now that he’s actually awake enough to look at Castiel, he notices again that as much as Cas looks more rested than he did last night, he still doesn’t look well. Castiel has a blush high on his cheeks and he’s sweatier than making pancakes warrants, but he gets through it without a single complaint, and a few minutes later, Dean is served three perfectly brown pancakes still steaming from the pan. Castiel has already found the syrup and butter and placed it on the table along with utensils, so Dean picks up a knife and fork and gets to it. Castiel sits across from him just as Dean’s cutting into the first pancake, and after he stuffs a bite into his mouth and decides it’s not half bad, he sends Cas a nod of approval across the table.

“I hoped they wouldn’t be terrible,” Castiel says as he cuts into his own.

“They’re not.” They’re not  _ great _ either, but it’s better than the bowl of cereal he would have had without Castiel here. “Thanks for cooking.”

“I was happy to do it, believe me.”

“You want some coffee?” Dean asks.

“That’s okay. It wasn’t pleasant trying to break the habit the first time around, and honestly, I’m more rested now than I can ever remember being, so it’s probably best that I don’t indulge.”

“You sleep well then?” Dean checks.

“Very well. Knowing that I was actually safe when I closed my eyes was a huge relief. I haven’t slept that soundly in years.”  _ Years. _ That’s the first indication Castiel has given of how long it’s been since he’s been on the streets, and Dean feels his heart go out to him all over again. “I ate a bowl of cereal before this,” Castiel says, somewhat sheepishly. 

“I told you to help yourself.”   
  
“Yes, but I’m sure you didn’t mean to eat two breakfasts.”

“It’s a bowl of cereal, I’m really not all that worried about it,” Dean tells him. Not only that, but Castiel could definitely use the extra food to get his weight back up. Castiel could use a lot of things, actually. 

After watching Dr. Sexy with him last night and getting to know him a little better, Dean found himself lying in bed thinking that the decent thing to do would be to offer to help Castiel get back on his feet. Of course, he doesn’t know what caused Castiel to wind up on the streets in the first place, but since he doesn’t seem to be addicted to anything and he’s a smart enough guy, he figures Castiel must have had some kind of halfway decent job before this. Maybe all he needs is a place to shower and an address to add to a resume and the guy can get back out there, start saving up, and get a place of his own.

It also might not be that simple, but who knows until they try, right?

“So I’ve gotta do some groceries today—”

Castiel pushes away from the table immediately. “Of course. I’ll just change into my own belongings and leave you to it.”

“Cas, hang on a sec,” Dean says, stopping him before he takes off. “What I was going to say is that if you want to tail along, we can stop by a thrift shop and pick you up some clothes, maybe see if we can find a pair of shoes that aren’t falling apart.”

Castiel stops short, looking at him with his head tilted to the side like he’s a malnourished but adorable little bird. “I don’t understand.”

“I figure you did me a solid last night by not croaking  _ and _ not robbing me, plus you like Dr. Sexy, and you made me breakfast. Might as well keep you around while this is working for both of us.”

“Dean, I—” Castiel stops, shaking his head in disbelief. “I don’t have any income.”

“I know,” Dean says quietly. “I’m not asking you for money. The clothes won’t cost much, and it’s not like feeding two people instead of one is gonna cost a lot more.”

“Probably double, actually.”

Dean snorts a laugh, because he’s got him there. “It’s not a big deal. And it won’t be forever, right?” Castiel looks at him funny again, and he asks, “I mean, I’m guessing you don’t  _ want _ to live on the streets, which means you know you gotta find a job to make that happen.”

“I can... try that... I think,” Castiel stutters, sounding unsure. 

“What’d you used to do before?” Dean wonders.

“I was a partner at an accounting firm, but I can’t go back there,” he says, sounding firmer than he has on anything so far. “I c-can’t—” He stops, shaking his head. “I can’t work in an office again. I tried, but I can’t.”

“Okay,” Dean says easily. “You can do whatever you want. Go work at McDonald’s for all I care, just try and find a job, okay?”

Castiel nods, breathing easier now but not looking any less nervous. “I know... I know you’re likely curious about h-how I ended up like this. And I’m not withholding the information because it’s something sketchy that will make you rescind your offer. I just...” He looks up and meets Dean’s eyes, looking so fucking heart-broken, so  _ haunted, _ that Dean knows exactly what happened to him before he even tells him. Because he knows that look, he had it staring at him in the face anytime his dad didn’t bury himself in the bottom of a bottle, and he knows that Castiel is dealing with the kind of loss that people don’t get over. “I  _ can’t _ talk about it. I’m s-sorry, but it’s just—it’s too hard, Dean.”

“It’s okay,” Dean says, meaning it. “I don’t need to know if you don’t wanna tell me. I’m not great at talking about that kind of stuff anyway,” he admits. “I’ll listen, but I suck at saying the right thing when I’m supposed to. But, uh...” He licks his lips to give himself another second and says, “Just to put it out there, my mom died in a house fire when I was little.”  


It’s been more than 25 years and it’s still like a fucking punch to the gut every time he says it. Doesn’t help that this time, Castiel drops his chin to his chest and squeezes his eyes closed. He doesn’t know if he should keep going or not, but decides to power through and just get it out there. 

“Sucked for me and Sammy, obviously, but my dad... he never really got over it, you know? He tried, but he was drunk more often than not, and when he wasn’t, all he fucking did was miss her. So just... I don’t know what you’ve got going on for sure, obviously... but all I’m saying is that I get it. You’re not drunk, you’re not high, and you don’t rob strangers in the middle of the night, so as far as I can tell, you’re doing okay, Cas.”

Castiel’s mouth pulls tight, like he’s trying to keep a sob inside, and as much as it breaks his fucking heart, he knows Castiel doesn’t want to talk about it more than that.  


“I’m gonna go take a shower and get dressed to head out for those groceries. I’ll go grab you some clothes for today, and then if you’re up for it, we can go hit up that thrift store.”

Castiel doesn’t look up, but he does nod, so Dean puts his dishes in the sink and heads upstairs, feeling like an asshole for making Castiel so upset. He grabs him some old jeans from when he was younger that haven’t fit in so long he doesn’t even know why he still has them, then adds a belt when he still doesn’t know if they’ll fit Castiel with how thin he is, finds a t-shirt that shrunk a little when it was dried, then adds a zip-up hoodie and a pair of socks. Castiel should still have boxers from the package yesterday, so that should be everything he needs. He puts them in the bathroom with a fresh towel, then goes upstairs to get himself ready for the day.

He keeps his shower short, knowing both showers at the same time don’t run all that well, then dresses in his usual jeans, black tee, and plaid flannel over-shirt. He tidies up the dishes from breakfast, puts on his boots, and waits for Castiel to join him. Like yesterday, Dean finds himself surprised by Castiel’s appearance when he sees him again. The hoodie hides just how skinny he is, and with jeans on, he looks like a normal dude and not in a bad way at all. He remembers thinking that he would be handsome if he put on a little weight, and finds himself agreeing with his past self even more now that he’s seen him in jeans.

“Everything fit okay?” he asks.

“Jeans are a little long, and the belt’s pulled to the tightest hole, but they’ll certainly do. Thank you.” Dean lifts his eyebrows, and Castiel chuckles. “Sorry, I take it back.”

“That’s more like it. You ready to go?”

“I have to tell you something first,” Castiel says. “There are some businesses in this city that don’t take well to homelessness. Some are kinder than others when it comes to loitering, and I can’t guarantee that I’ll be welcome at all of the places we go to.”

Dean tries to piece that together. “You’ve been kicked out of grocery stores?”

“Yes.”

“For how long? Ever?”

“It certainly seemed that way at the time.”

Dean shakes his head. “Well, that’s horseshit. You’re not homeless now, and you won’t be loitering, so if anybody has a problem with you being there to buy groceries, I got a problem with them and I’m not gonna hesitate to let them know it.”

“I don’t want to cause any trouble for you after everything you’ve done for me.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Dean says. “People probably won’t even recognize you now that—” He stops mid-sentence, knowing there’s no way he was going to end it without insulting him.

“I’m not under an inch of dirt?” Castiel finishes for him, looking amused.

“Something like that,” Dean admits, feeling embarrassed. “Sorry.”

“Don’t apologize. It was the truth. And honestly, it’s kind of nice to hear somebody  _ not _ tiptoe around it for once.”

“I’m definitely your guy for that,” Dean says, leading the way to the door. “My brother always says I have no tact.”

“I don’t know,” Castiel counters. “I think you’re doing alright.”

Dean looks over his shoulder as he walks towards the car. “Yeah, but you have to say that.”

Castiel chuckles quietly, and Dean’s grinning to himself when he leans across to flip the lock up for him. Castiel gets in the passenger side of the car and closes the door behind him. 

“This is my Baby,” Dean declares proudly. “Used to be my dad’s, but she’s all mine now. Isn’t she a beaut?”

“I don’t know much of anything about cars, but I will say this is a very cool one.”

Dean hits him with another smile. “Are you just saying that because you have to?”   
  
Castiel deadpans, “You’ll never know,” and once again, Dean starts chuckling as he puts Baby in reverse and starts backing out of the driveway. 

“Salvation Army okay?” he asks Castiel.

“Works for me.”

Ten minutes later, they pull in into the parking lot of the Salvation Army, and the two of them hurry inside to get out of the cold. It’s a lot busier inside than he would have expected, but Dean sees the sign where it says  _ Men’s, _ so he points, and they head in that direction. Castiel says he has no idea what size clothes he’ll fit into now, so they grab a bunch of jeans to try those on first. Once he decides on a size, they get a couple of pairs in different washes, a pair of khakis, and some dress pants. They track down a matching blazer, a couple of button downs, and a small stack of t-shirts. 

He can’t even blame Castiel’s cold for his pink cheeks and ragged breathing now, because they have the heat pumped up in here and all of the people packed inside is only making it hotter than hell and half of Georgia. They find a pair of dress shoes but don’t have any luck finding sneakers in Castiel’s size, but Dean tells him they can come back and check again soon. Castiel assures him the ones he has are fine, but Dean figures he probably can’t see the way the sole is coming off the back heel when he walks the way Dean can. Seeing as Dean spends a lot of time on his feet, he knows how important a good pair of shoes are, and he’s not going to let that fly if he can help it. When they finally get up to the counter, they find out it’s half off day, which explains the crowd and the mile-long line up, and also means that everything they got for Cas barely tops thirty dollars.

Even still, Castiel is pink in the face when Dean pays, and when they get back into the car, he says, “I’ll pay you back for this someday. With my first paycheck.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Dean says, meaning it. “You get a job, and that’ll be payback enough.”

They hit a Target next so Dean can buy a couple of extra towels and get Castiel his own underwear, socks, and toiletries. Castiel seems to be slowing down more and more the longer they walk around, and just as they’re passing the kids department, Castiel gets super quiet before he mumbles, “Bathroom,” and bolts down the hall. Dean figures the dude needs a break to catch his breath, and uses the advantage to swing by the shoe department. He finds a decent pair of black canvas sneakers in Castiel’s size and impulsively decides to hide them under the paper towels he grabbed earlier. 

He’s cashed out and waiting by the front door when Castiel joins him again, covered in a sheen of sweat and looking even worse than when he saw him last, and even though Dean offers to take him home before they do groceries next, Castiel assures him he’s fine.

Turns out, he’s not fine.

They’ve barely been in the store for ten minutes when Castiel starts breathing like he’s running a marathon instead of walking at a leisurely pace through the grocery store. Once again, Dean asks if he wants to go wait in the car, but he says he’s fine. Those two words are starting to grate on his nerves, especially since all it takes is one look at Castiel to  _ know _ he isn’t fine at all. Even still, they load up the grocery cart. Dean throws in anything that catches Castiel’s eye for more than a second, but by the time they get to the check out, Castiel is having a hard time catching his breath at all.

“Cas, what’s going on buddy?”

Castiel shakes his head. “I—I can’t seem to get a decent breath.”

Wondering about a fever again, he reaches out and touches the back of his hand to Castiel’s forehead. “You’re burning up, man.”

“I’m f—”

“You can barely stand up,” Dean interrupts. He looks around and spots a bench by the door. “Go sit by the door and see if you can catch your breath, and I’ll help you out to the car once I pay for all this shit.”   
  
“I can—”

“I swear to god, Castiel. If you pass out on me because you’re too fucking stubborn to sit your ass down when you literally can’t breathe, I’m gonna be  _ pissed.” _

Castiel’s mouth presses into a firm line. “Fine.”

Dean keeps a careful eye on him when he goes through the motions of paying for his groceries, and by the time he gets over to him, Castiel is breathing mostly normal. 

“Better?” he asks. 

“I think so. I don’t know what that was about.”

“I’m guessing you don’t have a doctor?”

“Not one I can afford to see,” Castiel replies. 

“We have a deal about you not biting the big one on my watch, right?”

Castiel smiles a little. “Yes, we do.”

Figuring that’s all he can do, Dean says, “Alright. Let’s get you back to my place so you can take a load off.”

Except it turns out that doesn’t help, either. He gets him more Ibuprofen, then adds acetaminophen on top of that two hours later, and Castiel’s temperature doesn’t drop. He finally makes a run to a pharmacy and buys a thermometer, and damn near hits the roof when he sees Castiel’s temperature is 104F. 

A quick Google search tells him that’s way too high and to contact a doctor, which means Castiel has two choices. 

“You’re not dying in my house, so you can either get up and get your ass in the car so I can take you to a clinic, or you wait until you fall asleep and I carry you there myself.”

“I’m not your responsibility, Dean,” Castiel says, his voice hard. “And just because I slept here last night doesn’t mean you have the right to tell me what to do. I don’t have to listen to you.”

“I don’t know why you’re being such a dick about this. You’re sick,” he says slowly. “You’re having a hard time breathing. If you see a doctor, they can help you breathe. What part of this aren’t you getting?”

“Do you know how doctors treat people like me?” Castiel finally shouts. “They don’t care, Dean!”

“Well I do!” Dean shouts back, realizing for the first time how true that is. “I do, okay?” he repeats more quietly. “Even if you don’t, and nobody else does, I do. And I don’t want to see you sitting here suffering when you don’t need to be.” Castiel looks like he’s softening, so he softens his voice, too, and says, “Please, Cas.”

Castiel rolls his eyes, but his shoulders slump in defeat. “Fine,” he sighs. “There’s a clinic that’ll take me for no fee, but we’ll probably be there all day.”

Dean doesn’t say that he doubts that, but he wants to. He grabs his phone and a book for Cas, and they head out. He tells Cas to put his phone number and his address on the forms, then leaves him alone to fill out the rest so Cas doesn’t think he’s trying to figure out his personal shit. Like he suspected, after Castiel goes through triage, he gets brought back into a room almost immediately. It kills him that he can’t go in with him, both because he’s not entirely convinced Cas is going to tell the doctor the whole story and because he’s too fucking nosy not to know what’s going on in there, so he’s left to pace back and forth like an idiot for  _ four fucking hours _ before Castiel finally comes back into the waiting room. 

“I have pneumonia,” he declares, already heading out the door that leads to the parking lot. 

Dean grimaces as he grabs his stuff, then catches up to him. “That doesn’t sound good.”

“No. I’ll live though.” He holds up a little slip of paper and explains, “I was prescribed antibiotics.”

“Okay, we can hit a pharmacy on the way home,” Dean offers. 

“Apparently I’ll start to feel better in a few days, but he stressed that I need to finish the whole prescription even if I do.”

“That’s it?” Dean asks. 

Castiel shrugs. “He also said to drink plenty of warm liquids, watch for my fingernails or lips turning blue, and if my breathing gets worse I’m supposed to come back.” He looks reluctant to say what he has on his mind, but he finishes, “He said it was a good thing I came in when I did. So thanks for being such an ass about it.”

Dean legitimately smiles at that. “Anytime. Let’s make a stop for hot chocolate and then get you set up on the couch for the rest of the day. I can heat up some leftover soup to tide us over until dinner, too.”

“I can help with that.”

“No. You’re off your feet for the day or I’m calling your doctor.” Before Castiel can argue, Dean says, “Sam had pneumonia once, and I distinctly remember the doctor saying to get lots of rest and lots of sleep, and not to do anything strenuous for a while. Funny your doctor didn’t mention anything like that.”

Castiel doesn’t respond until they’re back on the road, and even then, his voice is small. “I don’t want you to feel like you have to keep letting me stay with you. You’ve done more than enough already. I can handle this on my own.”

“You don’t know me well yet, but believe me when I say I  _ rarely _ do things I don’t want to do. Perk of being a single adult,” he quips. “If I get to a point where I’m annoyed that you’re recovering on my couch, I’ll tell you. But until then, you don’t have to worry about me doing shit I don’t want to do. Capice?”

Cas doesn’t say anything, but when he looks over to coax an agreement out of him, he’s fast asleep. 

He slows down a little and takes his time driving through town to find a drive-thru pharmacy. Once that’s done, he stops at a Dunkin Donuts to get hot chocolate, which Cas sleeps all the way through, then takes the long way home. He’s reluctant to wake him, but he knows Cas will be more comfortable once they get in the house, so he says his name a few times. 

When that doesn’t work, he reaches out to touch his shoulder, and Cas scares the fucking life out of him when his eyes pop open and he flings Dean’s arm off of him like he’s about to fight for his life. 

“Cas! Cas, it’s me!” Dean says forcibly, his hands up like he’s at gunpoint. “You fell asleep in the car, buddy.”

“Shit, sorry.” 

“Let’s get you inside, okay?”

Cas nods, so Dean grabs the two hot chocolates and unlocks the front door. Before Cas sits down, he suggests changing into a pair of pajama bottoms to get comfy, and Cas does that while Dean gets the leftover soup out of the fridge. He expects Castiel to stay in his room, but he trudges out to the living room and plops onto the couch, already breathing hard again. 

“I thought I was just too weak from not getting enough to eat,” Castiel says some time later. “I didn’t think I was ill to the point where it was affecting my breathing. I’m not... suicidal,” he finishes quietly. 

“I’m not gonna lie to you, Cas, I’m pretty damn relieved to hear that.” Castiel drops his gaze, and Dean goes back to stirring the soup. “You could camp out in your room if you wanted to.”

“Am I bothering you?” Cas asks. 

“No,” Dean says truthfully. Cas is good company. “Just, if you’re supposed to rest and sleep and stuff, thought you might be more comfortable in your bed.”

“I’d really rather stay out here if it’s all the same to you. Being alone for too long... isn't good for me.”

Dean nods, understanding exactly what he means. “More Dr. Sexy as soon as the soup’s ready, then. How’s the hot chocolate?”

“Delicious. Thank you for stopping even though I fell asleep.”

Like last night, Cas seems much better when he’s sitting down. As much as he still shivers from his fever every now and then, he doesn’t have such a hard time breathing when he isn’t moving as much. Dean purposely makes plenty of comments during the episode he turns on to make sure Cas stays awake until he’s finished his soup and crackers, but then shuts up so he can sleep. Sure enough, he’s passed out less than ten minutes after Dean takes his bowl away, so Dean switches from Dr. Sexy over to Friends while he’s asleep. 

He was hoping to do an oil change on his car this weekend, but she doesn’t  _ really _ need it yet, and he’d much rather keep an eye on Cas in case he stops breathing in his sleep or something. So even though it’s not the weekend plans he had in mind, he spends the rest of his Sunday curled up on the couch watching TV. 

He texts Sam on and off, looking at pictures and listening to him go on about a dog he and Eileen got a few weeks ago. Dean’s not much of a dog guy, but Sammy’s always wanted one ever since he was a little kid, so he’s happy enough he finally got one to pretend to coo over a dozen pictures of a drooling dog. He considers telling him about Cas, but doesn’t feel like answering the hundreds of questions he’s bound to get, so decides against it. 

He does another Google search to see what else he can find out about pneumonia while he’s got his phone out. He’s surprised to see Cas doesn’t have the tell-tale cough usually associated with it, but he’s definitely got a bunch of the other stuff. He doesn’t do well with vomit so he’s hoping Cas doesn’t start with that, but since he’s on antibiotics now, he probably won’t. With his curiosity satisfied for the time being, he gets up around six to start making dinner, and Cas wakes up just as he’s adding the last of the cheese. 

“Are you making Kraft Dinner?” Cas asks from the couch. 

“Homemade mac and cheese,” Dean corrects. “Cheesier, and so much better than the box shit.”

“That sounds incredible. Can I help?” 

“Nope, you can keep your ass where you are and I’ll bring it to you when it’s ready.”

He must finally be getting through to Cas, because he actually listens without bitching about it. Dean brings both bowls out to the living room, then goes back for drinks and brings those out too. Dean turns the TV back to Dr. Sexy and Castiel asks, “What did I miss when I was sleeping?”

“Nothing, I switched to something else when you started snoring.”

“I don’t snore,” Cas says. Even though that’s true, it’s more fun to pretend like it isn’t, so Dean huffs a laugh like Cas has no idea. 

They eat mostly in silence, watching Dr. Sexy and working away at emptying their bowls. Even though pneumonia sometimes causes a decrease in appetite, he’s glad to see Castiel doesn’t have that problem on top of everything else because he needs the calories, and he’s pleased when Castiel polishes off his bowl in no time. 

It’s around ten o’clock when Dean tells Castiel he has to call it a night since he works tomorrow. 

Castiel cocks his head to the side and says, “I just realized I don’t even know what you do.”

“Nothing too glamorous,” Dean says. “I do security down at the Roman building.”

“That seems like good work,” Castiel says. 

“Pays the bills,” Dean shrugs. “Anyway, I leave around eight, get home around five. You’re good to just hang out here while I’m gone, right?”

“Wait. You’re okay with me being here while you’re not?”

“I figure since you didn’t rob me last night, you’re probably not gonna do it in broad daylight.” When he only gets a bland look for that, he cracks a smile. “I don’t know, Cas. I see a lot of sketchy people, and I just don’t think you’re one of them. I’ve been wrong before, but I trust you,” he says simply.

“I won’t betray that trust.”

And that’s how he ends up living with a homeless person.

Dean’s new normal starts the very next day. He doesn’t know if Cas picked up on the fact that he isn’t much of a morning person or if he just sleeps in now that he can, but Dean doesn’t see him before work most mornings. Cas sleeps with the door open a crack, so Dean does poke his head in before he takes off to make sure Cas is still breathing the first few days, but that’s the only interaction they have during the day. Cas is usually waiting for him in the kitchen when he comes home at the end of the day, and the house is always spotless with no dishes in the sink and not a speck of dirt to be found. Dean’s the one who cooks for the first week, but by the second week into living together, Cas is able to be up and about without getting winded, and from then on, Dean comes home to a hot meal ready and waiting for him.

He’s told Cas a bunch of times that he doesn’t have to be his maid, but Castiel insists that since he’s not able to contribute to the household financially, it’s only fair that he helps in other ways. Dean would never say it out loud, but it’s a hell of a relief not to do everything by himself all the time. With Cas helping with the cooking, it saves him an hour every night, which means the two of them are able to spend even more time together.

Thankfully, Cas seems to enjoy the company as much as he does. It’s not like he didn’t already know how much he hated living alone after Sam left, but having somebody home when he gets there at the end of the day is a hell of a lot better than he remembers. Cas is a great listener, and being able to tell him meaningless little things over dinner like when he gets caught behind some asshole driver on the way home is just  _ nice. _ It makes him feel like he isn’t just going through the motions of surviving one day at a time, but actually starting to enjoy himself in ways he hasn’t for a long time.

Before he knows it, Cas has been there for a month, and he’s fully recuperated. He’s starting to put on a little bit of weight, his face is beginning to fill out, and every day it seems he looks a little less like a sad sack of skin and a little more like a person. His personality comes out the more comfortable he gets, and it doesn’t take them long to discover that they’re both equally stubborn. Castiel is  _ worlds _ more mature than he is, but thankfully, he’s easy enough to drag down to Dean’s level when it comes to puns or inappropriate jokes. Dean takes it as a tiny personal victory every time Cas tries to stay serious and he can crack him. He tells himself it has nothing to do with how nice Cas’s smile is. For Castiel’s part, he has a dry, sarcastic sense of humor that makes Dean laugh more than he has in years, and Cas is quickly becoming one of his favorite people because of it.

They decide to tell Sam that Cas is his new roommate, and after dodging for a couple of days, Sam, Eileen, and Cas meet for the first time over FaceTime. They seem to get along well, and Sam and Eileen say they’ll make sure to carve out time for a visit soon so they can get to know each other for real. Whether it’s that that kicks Castiel into gear or if it’s just a coincidence, it’s the very next day when Dean wakes up to find Castiel in the kitchen before work for the first time.

He’s in a button down instead of a t-shirt, slacks instead of jeans, and that same trench coat Cas was wearing the first time Dean saw him. He’s done something to his hair so that it’s kind of artfully tousled instead of just messy, and it really fucking works for him. All of it does, Dean realizes as he slowly drags his eyes from head to foot and back up again. When his eyes catch on Castiel’s, he notices Cas looking at him funny, which is when he realizes he’s been  _ blatantly _ checking the guy out for who knows how long. And  _ that _ is going to be a problem if he doesn’t nip it in the bud right the fuck now. 

Trying to save face, Dean asks, “What’d you do, shit the bed?”

“I’ve decided I’m going to spend the morning at the library to update my resume, and then I’m going to—to  _ try _ to hand some out this afternoon.”

Dean’s sure he hasn’t smiled this big in the morning since he was a little kid. “Cas, that’s great! Any idea where you want to work?”

Castiel shakes his head. “I’m not really sure. I thought I’d look at who’s hiring and go from there.”

“You want a ride? Bus money?”

Castiel looks at the floor, but inclines his head. “Bus money would be helpful.”

Dean pulls out his wallet and hands him all his ones and a five. “That enough?”

“That’s more than enough,” Castiel says, already trying to hand him some back.

“Just keep it. You don’t know how many places you’ll have to go.” Then, as he says it, he asks, “Wait, is there like, a bus pass you can get that’ll work for longer than today?”

“There are, but they’re expensive, Dean. Let’s start with this for today and if I need more for tomorrow, we can discuss it then.”

He knows Castiel struggles with taking money from him when he’s already paying for everything else, so he lets it go. “Alright. If you need a ride home or you end up in my neck of the woods around the time I punch out, call me from a pay phone or whatever and I’ll swing by and get you.”

“I’ll do that.”

“And don’t forget to eat lunch,” Dean threatens, pointing a finger at him accusingly. “Pack a sandwich or something.”

“Yes, dear,” Cas deadpans.

Dean laughs, because he was being a bit of a nag. “Good luck, man. I’m proud of you.”

Castiel is distinctly pink in the cheeks when he replies, much more sincerely now, “Thank you, Dean.”

It’s no surprise that Dean finds himself wondering about how Cas is doing several times during the day. He hopes nobody is a dick to him and puts him off of the job search before he even really gets started, because even though he still doesn’t know why, he knows how big of a step this has been for Castiel to take and he wants it to go okay. He can be a little over-protective of Castiel, and he probably mothers him more than he should, but Cas was doing such a shitty job of taking care of himself at first, he felt like  _ somebody _ had to. And now that he’s doing so well, he doesn’t want some jerk to come along and fuck it up for him.

So he checks his phone more often than he ever has during the work day, but he doesn’t get a phone call or an email or anything, so he assumes everything went okay. His heart sinks like a damn stone when he sees Cas leaning against his car (and they’re going to have to talk about  _ that) _ when he gets to the parking garage, but the closer he gets, the more he can see that Cas is smiling.  _ Really _ smiling. Maybe for the first time he’s ever seen, Cas is smiling so big that a hint of his gums are showing, and before he can even begin to reconcile how his first thought is how cute it makes Cas look, Cas is racing towards him and throwing his arms around him.

“I got a job!” Castiel’s words are said through breathless laughter, like he can’t quite believe what he’s saying, and it has Dean laughing along with him as they rock back and forth with their arms around each other. “I got a job, Dean! I did it!”

He wants to say something back, but he’s momentarily speechless by how good Cas feels pressed against him. He’s still way too thin, but the inch of height difference between them makes them line up in all the right places, and Dean can’t help but notice how perfectly his chin hooks over Castiel’s shoulder. Cas smells faintly like sweat, but under that, it’s the same masculine scent that drifts out from under the shower door every weekend, and Dean’s turning his head to breathe it in nice and deep before he realizes what the hell he’s doing and how fucking weird it is to do that to somebody he’s not romantically involved with.

Wait.  _ Shit.  _ Is he into Cas?

Startled by his own reaction, he opens his eyes (when did he close them?), gives Cas a manly slap on the back, and takes a deliberate step back to put some space between them.

“Isn’t that great?” Cas asks. 

His question reminds Dean that he hasn’t actually said anything yet. “Yes! Holy shit, that’s  _ amazing,” _ he exclaims, punching Cas’s shoulder like they’re bros. “I’m so surprised I’m actually speechless.”

“Well, it’s nothing spectacular,” Castiel starts. “And it’s only part time at first, but I thought easing into it might be better than just throwing myself in all at once.”

“Anything is better than nothing,” Dean says. “I’m so fucking proud of you, man.” Then, as it occurs to him, he suggests, “Let’s go celebrate! I’m taking you out for dinner.”

“You really don’t have to do that,” Castiel says. “I wouldn’t have been able to even get a job if it wasn’t for you. You’ve already done more than enough.”

“The hell I have,” Dean argues as he gets in behind the wheel. He waits for Cas to get in his side of the car, then continues, “It’s not every day somebody gets the balls to put themselves out there for the first time in a long time and it actually pays off. So let’s go get some burgers. My treat,” he quips. 

It’s probably a bad joke since everything is always his treat, but Cas huffs a laugh nonetheless. “Okay, but only if you let me pay for a meal for both of us after I get my first paycheck,” Castiel barters.

“You have yourself a deal. You wanna hit the Roadhouse?”

“You know I can’t say no to the food there.”

Castiel tosses his trench coat in the back seat, and Dean very purposely keeps his eyes on the road while Castiel undoes a couple of buttons at his neck. Then he starts rolling up his sleeves, exposing the golden skin of his forearms one inch at a time, and Dean’s both flustered and shocked that he can feel his blood heating up just from that. Exasperated by his body’s reaction to fucking  _ forearms,  _ he makes a mental note that he needs to call a friend for a quick fuck before he makes things unnecessarily complicated between him and Cas. 

Determined to have a good time, he puts that out of his mind once they pull into the Roadhouse, and he and Cas walk in and wait for a seat. They don’t have to wait long before the pretty blonde waitress who always serves them waves them over to a booth. They slide into the seats across from each other as they greet her, and once they’re settled in, she asks, “What can I get you boys to drink tonight?”

“Since we’re celebrating, we better have a couple of beers, huh, Cas?”

“That’s not necessary,” Castiel tries, but Dean holds two fingers up to... Jo, he sees on her name tag. 

“Doesn’t look like he’s gonna take no for an answer,” Jo says to Cas. 

“He rarely does,” Castiel replies, sounding resigned. 

“What kind’re ya drinkin’?” 

“Just whatever’s on tap is fine,” Cas replies.

Dean tosses out a brand he likes that he knows they have, and Jo disappears to fill their order. “You haven’t even had beer since that first night we got pizza, have you?”

“No. I didn’t want it to affect my medication.”

“Didn’t wanna get pregnant, huh?” Dean jokes, surprising a laugh out of Castiel. 

“I’m lacking more than the proper parts in order to accomplish  _ that,” _ Castiel says. 

Figuring he’s alluding to sex, Dean lets his curiosity get the better of him and asks, “How long has it been?”

“So long that I’ve lost count,” Castiel answers. “I was too busy trying to survive one day to the next to worry about that while I was on the streets, but now that I’m getting healthier and starting to look like myself again, it’s started to cross my mind.”

Hearing Cas talk about thinking about sex has him feeling overly warm, and he’s sure he’s never wanted a beer more than he does in this exact moment. “Been too long for me, too,” he admits. “Gonna have to make a few calls to see if anybody’s up for a roll in the hay.”

Castiel nods, but drops his gaze before he responds. “It continues to surprise me that you don’t have a significant other. You must have people coming onto you all the time.”

“Me?” Dean asks. “Why?”

Even though Castiel is looking at the table, he can see the way his ears turn red. “Surely you’re aware that you’re an attractive man. On top of that, you’re a good person, Dean. It’s impossible not to see that.”

His insides feel all funny from hearing Cas say that, but he shrugs him off. “Well thanks, but I’ve had some pretty craptastic luck in the love department. So much that I don’t even really bother anymore.”

“Don’t you get lonely?” Castiel wonders. 

“I did, but not so much that I’ve got you now,” Dean says with an easy smile. “Just a heads up though, I might duck out for a few hours this weekend depending who’s free.”

Castiel nods, but doesn’t respond, and the silence is only broken when Jo comes back with their beer. “I didn’t get to ask before, but what are we celebrating?” she wonders as she places the glasses in front of them. 

Dean looks to Cas, who is still blushing, and takes pity on him. “Cas here got a new job. Getting back out into the workforce for the first time in a while.”

“Oh, that’s great! You must be excited,” she says with a smile. 

“Very,” Castiel admits. “Thank you.”

“So what’re you havin’ as your celebratory meal?” Jo asks.

They each order bacon cheeseburgers with fries, and when Jo disappears again, Dean leaps at the chance to change the subject. 

“So where’s your new job anyway?”

“I told you it was nothing spectacular, but uhm, it’s just at the Gas N Sip,” he says, seeming embarrassed. “They pay a few dollars above minimum wage, though, and offer health insurance, which is better than what I have now. And the woman who works there, Nora, she was always kind to me... before. She used to give me free hot dogs instead of throwing them out. I’m more than happy to work for her.”

Cas working at a gas station wasn’t what he was expecting, but a job’s a job as far as he’s concerned. “If you’re happy, I’m happy,” Dean says. “Easing yourself in a little bit at a time is a good idea, too. Then if you don’t have any problems handling it, you can branch out and try something more like what you used to do before. If you want.”

“One step at a time,” Castiel says, like it’s a mantra he’s familiar with. Dean holds up his beer glass and they tap them together in a cheers. 

“One step at a time,” Dean echoes. 

He’s barely taken a drink when he hears, “Dean?” in a familiar voice, but one he hasn’t heard in a very long time. 

His eyes follow the sound to land on his ex, Aaron Bass, walking towards the booth. His stomach clenches with nerves just from looking at him again, more than a year of on-again-off-again romance flashing in his mind's eye all in a moment. 

“Hey, Aaron. How’s it going?”

“Good,” Aaron answers easily. “Been a while. You look good.”

“Thanks, you too,” Dean says. He’s not really sure what else he’s supposed to say, but when he notices Cas shifting nervously, his eyes flick across the table at him.

Aaron must notice too, because he looks between them and says, “New boyfriend?” Before either of them can comment, Aaron reaches out to shake Cas’s hand. “I’m the ex-boyfriend,” he says, laughing good-naturedly.

Castiel only looks shocked for a second, but then he smoothly accepts the handshake and says, “I’m Cas.”

“Nice to meet you. Anyway, I don’t want to interrupt too much, just wanted to take the chance to say hello,” he says, looking at Dean again. “It was nice to see you. Take care.”

“Yeah, you too.”

And then Aaron is gone, leaving him and Cas sitting alone with the fact that Dean is into guys hanging heavily between them. He isn’t ashamed of it, and he’s out to all of his family and friends—hell, he even has his Facebook preferences set to both men and women—but Cas doesn’t have Facebook. The two of them have somehow never talked about their dating history or anything like that, so it just... never came up. By the time he realized it hadn’t come up, it felt like it had been too long and that it would be weird if he just came out and said it now. So he never said anything, and now here they are.

“So... you don’t watch Dr. Sexy for the storyline,” Castiel comments. 

Despite the awkwardness he feels over being outed like this, a laugh rolls out of him. “Definitely not. I probably should’ve said something before, but I didn’t want things to be weird if I brought it up when we were living together.”

“It doesn’t make any difference to me if you’re gay,” Castiel says. 

“Bi, actually,” Dean corrects, figuring he might as well get it all out in the open now. “I don’t have a preference either way.”

A smile lifts one corner of Castiel’s mouth. “I’m bisexual, too. I’ve never been in a relationship with a man, but I’ve been with a few.”

That  _ definitely _ doesn’t help things, but he tries to play it as cool as he can. “Jeez, Cas, you’re tellin’ me I could’ve been openly drooling over Dr. Sexy this whole time and you would’ve joined in?” he jokes. 

“It’s not as if you hid it very well anyway,” Castiel replies. 

Dean laughs freely, knowing he’s never been particularly subtle about anything, least of all his preferences. In fact... “I think this is the first time in my life I haven’t gotten, ‘I know,’ after I came out.”

Castiel laughs. “If you had said it instead of your ex, there’s a good chance you’d still have your streak. He seemed nice, by the way.”

“He was. Is,” Dean corrects. “We just didn’t want the same things.”

“Did he try to make you eat salad?” Castiel jokes. 

Dean snorts a laugh. “Everybody tries, but nobody succeeds.” Then more seriously, “No, we tried to make it work but it just didn’t.”   
  
“I suppose it happens sometimes,” Castiel offers.

“What about you?” Dean asks. Now that the topic is on the table, he’s curious. “You said you’ve never been in a relationship with a guy, so that means there must be some women you left brokenhearted along the way.”

Castiel goes stark still, his eyes unfocusing and taking on that haunted look Dean knows very well by now. Cas puts his head in his hands and lets out a shaky breath. “I—I can’t talk about that here.”

“Alright,” Dean says easily. “Let’s uh, talk some more about your job. What’s the dress code like? Do you need more clothes, different shoes?”

That seems to snap him out of it, and soon enough, Cas is sitting up properly again and drinking his beer. He might drink it a little faster than he started, but Dean figures he’s celebrating, so when Jo comes by with their food and asks if Castiel wants another one, Dean answers for him and tells her to keep them coming. 

An hour later, they’re both done with dinner and dessert, and Castiel is working his way through his fourth beer. His posture is looser than Dean’s ever seen it, and for the first time he can remember, Castiel seems comfortable in his own skin. His smiles come more freely, his jokes more frequently, he doesn’t duck his head as much, and his touch lingers a little longer with every beer. For some reason, it seems right that Cas is a lovey-dovey drunk, and when Dean thinks about how long it’s been since Cas has had a kind human touch, he can’t find it in him to comment on it.

“I love this car,” Cas says dreamily as Dean basically pours him into the passenger seat.

“Yeah, and it’s gonna love you back as long as you don’t yack in it,” Dean says pointedly.

“I’m not going to throw up,” Castiel says once Dean gets in. “I’m not even drunk, I’m just tipsy.”

“Uh huh,” Dean replies dryly. “In my experience, the first sign of being drunk is declaring you’re not drunk.”

“You can’t possibly be implying that every sober person who says they’re not drunk  _ is _ actually drunk?”

“Don’t try outsmarting me when you’re drunk, Cas.”

Cas snickers, but the snicker turns into genuine laughter, and then Dean’s laughing with him as they make the short drive home. Dean opens the fridge once they get there and passes Castiel another beer now that they’re home safe. 

“Oh, I’m okay,” Castiel says with a shake of his head.

“You only like beer when they’re gouging me by the glass?”

“Fine.” Castiel’s hand darts out to swipe it from Dean, then he inclines his head in half a nod as if Dean’s royalty or something. “Thank you for the beer, Dean.”

“You’re welcome, Castiel.”

“Cas,” Cas corrects. “I like it better when you call me Cas.”

Dean grins at the moment of honesty. “You do, huh?”

Castiel nods, leaning one arm against the wall to kick off his boots (but he’s  _ definitely _ not drunk). “I don’t have to be sad, pathetic Castiel who couldn’t get his life together when I’m with you. I can just be Cas. Dean Winchester’s freeloading roommate. Not  _ quite _ put together yet, but getting there a little bit more every day.” Then his head snaps up as he seems to remember something. “One step at a time.”

Dean raises his hands, palm to the ceiling. “There ya go, buddy,” he says, amused by Castiel’s excitement over getting to say that again. “Fits for everything.”

“It really does,” Cas agrees. The two of them make their way into the living room where they plop down onto the couch. Whether Castiel’s aim is a little off or this is still more touchy-feely “not drunk” Cas, Cas sits closer than usual, so close that their thighs are touching. Cas looks down at their legs. “I missed my seat.”

“Only a little,” Dean says, trying not to laugh. “Still going with ‘not drunk?’”

“Not after this beer you forced on me,” Cas answers without missing a beat. “How come you’re not having one?”

That’s a good point. “You know, I think I will. We’re celebrating, right?”

“Yes we are!” Castiel declares. Dean gets up to grab himself a beer, and Cas says, “We’re celebrating me getting a job that a high schooler could get.”

“Hey, a job’s a job,” Dean insists. “Somebody’s gotta sell people cigarettes and lottery tickets. Why not you?”

“Why not me?” Castiel repeats, sounding rejuvenated by the idea. “It doesn’t matter that I used to clear a hundred thousand dollars a year without blinking an eye. I can fill the slurpee machine as well as the next guy.”

Dean’s eyes go a little wide at a hundred thousand dollars a year, but Cas still has a point. “Hell yeah, you can.”

Cas lolls his head to the side as Dean sits down, putting adequate space between them again. “I couldn’t have done this without you,” Cas says with his big blue eyes shining up at him.

“Nah,” Dean says, wrinkling his nose in disagreement. “You would’ve figured it out, man. You’re too smart not to.”

“Noooo.” Castiel shakes his head side to side, so much so that it goes from shoulder to shoulder. “It’s because of you, Dean. I spent more than a year on the streets. Three years with people looking at me like I was something to pity, something to fix, something to be disgusted by. And you? You looked at me like a person. You made me  _ feel like _ a person again for the first time in so long I didn’t even realize I stopped feeling like that somewhere along the way. Thank you for seeing me.”

What the hell does he say to that?

“Kinda hard to miss the guy sleeping in my basement,” Dean quips.

Castiel cracks a smile, but then he drops his eyes down to the beer bottle in his hand. “Can I ask you a question?”

“I’m an open book.”

“If we met before, when I wasn’t homeless and you didn’t feel like you had to help me, do you think we’d be friends?”

“First of all, I didn’t feel like I  _ had  _ to help you, I felt like you deserved a chance to warm up. Then you won me over and I didn’t want you to go. There was no  _ have to, _ alright?” He waits until Cas bobs his head in response, then answers the actual question. “And yeah, I think we’d be friends. You’re one of my favorite people, man.”

Cas perks up at that. “Really?”

“You think I’d spend all my free time hanging out with you instead of avoiding you if you weren’t?” Dean asks rhetorically. Cas has a big smile on his face, like he had no idea how much Dean enjoys spending time with him, and because that’s the last thing Dean wants, he opens up a little bit more. “I don’t wanna put any pressure on you to feel like you have to stay once you’ve got your shit together, but I’ve probably had more fun since you moved in than I’ve had in years. I like having you here.”

“I like  _ being _ here,” Cas says back. Even though Dean knows it’s more than likely the beer, his face feels a little warmer than usual when Cas shifts towards him and drops his head onto his shoulder. In a friendly type of way. “I like how I feel when I’m with you.”

Dean breathes out a nervous laugh. “You’re a sappy drunk, huh?”  
  
“I’m just happy,” he replies. “I feel it sometimes and try to shove it down, because why should I get to be happy when she...” Castiel stops himself and shakes his head. “No. I told myself I wasn’t going to do that tonight. One thing has nothing to do with the other, right?”

“I don’t even know what the hell you’re talking about,” Dean says, which makes Cas chuckle. “But if you’re askin’ me,” Dean pauses just long enough to bump their shoulders together, “I think you deserve to celebrate. You deserve to be happy.”

Cas’s voice is soft when he answers, “Thank you, Dean.”

“You wanna watch some Dr. Sexy?”

“Maybe just one. I’m weirdly tired after being out and talking to people so much today.”

“You got it,” Dean says. 

When he leans forward to grab the remote, Cas moves his head off of his shoulder, but he doesn’t shift back over onto his own cushion. Dean has a silent debate in his head for several long minutes over whether moving would make things weird or not, and ultimately comes to the conclusion that Cas seems to need this tonight for some reason. He doesn’t want to be the dick who’s too caught up on social norms and what he’s used to to be there for his friend, so he stays put. 

And once he gets caught up in the show and forgets to overthink every brush of their thighs and the heat coming off of Castiel’s body, he sorta sinks into it and realizes it’s actually pretty nice. It’s almost like cuddling, except he doesn’t have to worry about his arm going numb or his hand getting sweaty. It feels good. That might explain the sinking feeling of disappointment when he tries to get Cas to watch one more episode and gets shot down, but since Cas has been out of the house almost all day for the first time ever, they decide to call it a night.

Cas goes into the bathroom downstairs to do his business, then they exchange quick goodnights and Cas heads up the stairs. Dean flips to the movie channel and catches the last forty minutes of  _ You’ve Got Mail, _ and then he decides he’s ready to call it a night, too. As usual, he checks the front and back doors to make sure they’re locked, and then he makes his way to his room. He does the usual nighttime routine, but when he turns off the sink after brushing his teeth, he catches a faint sound through the wall. 

Cas is usually as quiet as a mouse, so it surprises him enough to make him stop to cock his head to the side, listening to see if he hears anything else. After a few seconds of silence, he figures he was just hearing things, and flips off his light and climbs into bed. He tosses and turns a little, but almost as soon as he’s stopped moving and his breathing evens out, he hears it again. 

Once again, he tilts his head to the side and concentrates on what he’s hearing: indistinguishable, muffled little sounds coming from Cas’s room. Dean’s heart sinks when he realizes what must have happened. After the day Cas had, combined with the beer and his  _ almost  _ confession about thinking he doesn’t deserve to be happy, it must’ve just been too much all at once for the poor guy. Honestly, he can’t blame him. He doesn’t know even half of what Cas is dealing with, but he does know he’s not gonna sit here and pretend to not hear who is quickly becoming his best friend crying through the goddamn wall, so Dean flings the blankets off of himself and goes next door to see what he can do to help.

Light from the cheap lamp in the spare room—Cas’s room—spills into the hallway from beneath the cracked doorway. Not wanting to be spotted before he knows what he’s dealing with here, he approaches silently, tilting his head to the side to peek through and getting an eyeful of Cas with his head thrown back, eyes squeezed tight, and the tendons in his neck pulled taut and bulging. He sure as fuck isn’t crying, and as Dean’s eyes automatically span down the rest of Cas’s very naked body, he sees  _ exactly _ why Cas is making quiet, choked-off sounds. 

He turns away as quickly as possible once his mind catches up with what he sees, but not before he catches sight of Cas’s dick sliding through the tunnel of his extremely large hand (seriously, how did he never notice how big Cas’s hands are until right now?) and hears half a dozen of the lowest, grittiest, hottest fucking sex sounds he’s ever heard in his god damn life. 

As he backs away and turns to damn near  _ sprint _ to his room, he can’t get the image (or the continuing sounds) out of his head. Maybe it’s a weird thought to have, but his immediate takeaway is that Cas isn’t nearly as thin as he thought he was. He could still see Cas’s ribs more than he’d prefer, and he noticed an insanely defined jut of one hip bone that he found surprisingly hot, but Cas hadn’t looked ill or starving or anything like that. Cas looked good, and now that Dean’s gotten a peek, he can’t help but imagine how much better he’ll look once he’s totally filled out. Cas’s skin must be naturally tan, too, because it had been almost golden, and  _ fuck _ that happy trail leading down to his crotch has to be one of the sexiest things he’s ever seen. 

Jesus Christ, now he’s fucking hard thinking about Cas, who is  _ enthusiastically _ jerking off with only a wall between them, and he can’t help but overhear every little breathy moan that Cas lets out. Either this is the first time Cas has gotten off in his bedroom or all the alcohol he drank tonight lowered his inhibitions and raised the volume of his voice, because it seems like he isn't concerned about keeping it down at all. And unfortunately for Dean, the symphony of sounds combined with the peek he got and all the porn he’s watched over the years paints a very clear mental picture of Cas fucking his fist and coming all over himself... and now  _ Dean _ wants to jerk off to the thought.

_ It’s wrong, it’s wrong, it’s wrong. _

Cas doesn’t know he saw him or that he can currently hear him, and he shouldn’t make this weird by doing something about the way his dick is currently tenting his pajama pants. Except even the thought of jerking off at the same time Cas is has a dark spot growing on the fabric, and  _ fuck, _ now that he’s seen Cas like that and started thinking about it he can’t stop.  _ Shit. _ His mind is telling him one thing and his body is moving without his permission, but the second he snakes his hand beneath the elastic band of his pajama pants and gets a hand on himself, his mind shuts the hell up as pleasure rips through him.  _ God, _ he needs this. It’s not like he never jerks off, but the muffled sounds from Cas next door is enough to trick his body into thinking he’s not doing this alone, and that’s definitely something he’s been missing. 

His mind provides all of the material he needs, focusing again on the memory of Cas stretched out in ecstasy as he fucked his hand. He thinks about the split-second glimpse he got of Cas’s cock poking through his fist, a few inches untouched at the base, making him think of how long that cock must be. Fuck, it’s been too long since he had a dick in his hand that wasn’t his, and his mouth waters as he imagines it now: Cas’s shaft hard and throbbing beneath his fingers, the heady feeling of all that hardness encased by soft skin slotting up against his, catching and dragging as their cocks grind together. 

He could get his mouth on those tendons he saw on Cas’s neck, lick a stripe from his collarbone to his jaw, then feel the scrape of Cas’s facial hair against his lips as he mouths under his chin. He knows it’s been a long time since Cas has been touched, and he can only imagine the kinds of sounds Cas would let out the first time Dean got his hands on him. 

Like Cas can hear his thoughts, Dean can hear a low moan through the wall, so wrecked sounding that he has to sink his teeth into his bottom lip to keep himself from moaning in response. Cas has a voice made for sex, and it has him picking up the pace, stroking himself first more purposefully and then more ruthlessly as he goes barreling towards his orgasm. He’s pushed closer and closer to the edge as the images of Cas writhing naked in his mind sync up with the sounds Cas is making next door. 

He imagines he can hear the slick sound of Cas pumping himself in his fist faster and faster while he can  _ actually  _ hear Cas’s low voice get rougher, grittier, and more genuinely pleasure-filled than any sex sounds he’s ever heard in porn. It has him on edge embarrassingly fast, and as soon as he thumbs over his cockhead on the upstroke, he knows he’s not gonna last. He keeps himself absolutely silent as he feels his body starting to lock up, ears piqued even as his heart pounds in his head. 

“Fuck, fuck, f—uunggh,” reaches him through the wall, and he closes his eyes as he pictures Cas coming thick and hot all over his belly, messing up that treasure trail and painting his tanned skin with streaks of white. 

It’s enough to trigger his own orgasm, and he thrusts wildly into his fist, chasing the peak of his arousal, imagining that he’s about to add to the mess between them as Cas presses him into the mattress. Thinking about that lithe body laid out on top of him with sharp hip bones digging into his skin has him coming hard, twitching and grunting as he spills onto his shirt, over his hand, and in his mind, all over Cas, too. He works himself through it with a couple of lazy strokes, continuing to bite down on his bottom lip as the last waves of pleasure roll through him until he’s completely spent and smiling through his exertion. 

_ Jesus,  _ that was a good one. 

He hasn’t come that hard in months, and he feels fucking fantastic, all loose and relaxed. Physically, at least. As his brain starts to think for itself instead of his dick, his stomach twists with guilt over knowing that he just jerked off to his roommate. Thankfully, nobody has to know about that but him. That comforting thought soothes some of his guilt, and once he’s wiped his hands clean on his dirty shirt and tosses it towards the hamper, he feels his body start to sink into the mattress. 

He’s asleep in minutes, with images of blue eyes and tanned skin dancing behind his eyelids. 


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **CHAPTER WARNING:** If you're the kind of person who watches cop shows and gets super, super upset when a little kid dies or goes missing, you're gonna want to read the spoiler waiting for you in the end notes before you keep reading.

Whether it’s the confidence Cas has gained from actually getting himself a job or Cas’s decision to allow himself to be happy, something changes between them after their celebratory night out. 

It’s subtle enough that he doesn’t know exactly what it means, but it’s definitely happening.

Just little things. Like how they always seem to be touching when they sit. It’s small at first—an accidental brush of an elbow, knees knocking together, legs stretched out on the couch with feet cradled in laps. All borderline _friendly_ sorta stuff that makes his stomach swoop and his palms start sweating like he’s back in the eighth grade, and when it seems pretty clear that Cas is as eager for the physical contact as he is... well, that makes it a hell of a lot harder to reign it in. Even though he isn’t intentionally doing it, Dean’s touches start to linger a little longer than they did before, and then Cas’s are right there with him. Sometimes it’s something as innocent as a palm on Cas’s back as he passes him in the kitchen, and sometimes it’s Cas’s hand staying on his knee for minutes at a time before he (seemingly) reluctantly moves it away. It makes his insides warm each and every time, but all the touching also has him ridiculously keyed up.

He’s started jerking off almost every night, which is something he hasn’t done since his mid-twenties, and it still isn’t enough. The worst part is that he can’t even bring himself to do anything about it, because even just scrolling through the contacts on his phone to see who might be down to fuck makes him feel like he’s cheating. Of course, that might have something to do with how Cas catches him in the act. 

Cas comes up behind him silently in the kitchen (where he definitely wasn’t _hiding_ from his roommate), and he hears his voice a split second before Cas’s hand rests on Dean’s lower back and he peers over his shoulder. “What are you doing? Ketch, Lisa, Lydia... are these friends of yours?”

“Kinda,” he lies. “Was just, uh, thinking of going out. For a few hours, you know. Not overnight or anything.”

“Oh.”

Cas’s hand falls from his back and he walks back to the living room without another word. Dean watches him go, wondering why he feels like he’s looking at a kicked puppy when Cas’s posture is totally normal. Cas sits on the couch, tucks his feet up beside him, and grabs for the remote control. He looks comfortable, homey, like he’s really settled in here. Like he belongs here. 

Dean feels an ache in his chest at the very idea of doing something that might make Cas doubt that, even a little, and it’s enough to have any and all thoughts of getting some tonight flying from his brain. He’s gone through longer dry spells than this for a hell of a lot less.

He’ll just have to deal.

With his mind made up, he throws a bag of popcorn into the microwave and brings the bowl over to put between him and Cas. 

“Strike out?” Cas asks him, his hand already digging into the buttery goodness.

“Never stepped up to the plate.”

Cas’s hand stalls, just for a second, then he brings a handful of popcorn to cradle it against his chest. “Not in the mood anymore?”

“I’m single, Cas, I’m always in the mood.” Cas nods like he knows exactly what he means, and Dean folds his mouth into a shrug before he answers for real. “Just seemed dumb all of the sudden when I’ve got perfectly good company right here.”

Even though Cas doesn’t turn towards him, he can see one side of Cas’s mouth lift into a smile and a blush spread from his ear down his neck, and even when he winds up falling asleep after yet another unsatisfactory wank session, he still doesn’t think he made the wrong choice. 

The two weeks between when Cas got hired for his job and the day he starts fly by, for his part anyway. As Cas’s first day gets closer and closer, Cas seems to get more and more nervous. That also seems to include seeking Dean out for comfort, which seems to make them even closer than they already were, but Cas is so freaked out about starting to work again that Dean doesn’t say anything about it. Cas has enough on his plate with his first day of work coming up and all of the emotional shit that seems to go with that (for reasons he still doesn’t understand), so instead of concentrating on the way his heart flips every time Cas sits just a little too close, he focuses on being a supportive friend and roommate. 

Which is how he winds up rubbing Cas’s back while he’s leaning his elbows on his knees the night before his first shift. 

“What if I just don’t go?” Cas asks. 

This is the fourth time he’s asked the same question. Dean’s gone through, “of course you’re gonna go,” “you have to go,” and “isn’t working what you want to do?” with no notable success so far, so this time around he changes tactics. 

“Don’t go then.”

Cas lifts his head to pin him with an affronted look. “I can’t do that to Nora.”

“Then I guess you have to go,” he grins. “Come on, Cas. What’s the worst thing that could happen?”

“I run into somebody I used to know and get thrown into an anxiety attack so bad I wind up sitting on the floor, crying and shaking, and Nora has to call you to pick me up. Then once you get there, she fires me and you’re so disappointed in me for being a useless sack of skin that you kick me out of your house, and I’m even worse off than I was a few months ago.”

Cas says it all in a single breath, and the undeniable edge of hysteria to Cas’s voice shuts him up for a solid five seconds. “Guess you’ve put some thought into this, huh?”

“Ya think?” Cas says sarcastically. 

“Okay, let’s break it down one step at a time,” Dean says, watching Cas’s body relax slightly just from the words. “I’m not gonna kick you out even if you do get fired on your first day.”

“I would deserve it.”

“No you wouldn’t,” Dean disagrees. “I know this is hard for you, man. No matter how it turns out, at least you can say you tried, right?”

Cas flops back suddenly, his head on the back of the couch and his nose to the ceiling. “Why are you so nice to me?”

“You’re such good company,” Dean says dryly. Cas huffs a laugh, and Dean adds, “Plus, I guess you’re pretty easy on the eyes.”

“You’re one to talk.”

Dean grins, amused by their banter, but it seems Cas isn’t in the same head space because he goes stark still almost immediately. 

_Oh._ Cas didn’t mean to say that. Cas _meant_ that. And holy shit, how did it get so incredibly awkward in less than five seconds?

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to say that.”

He’d laugh if his brain wasn’t short circuiting. “I’m not complaining. That’s, uh—” He stops, waits for Cas to look over at him, and uses the fear he sees in his friend’s eyes as a reason to speak plainly. “That’s good.”

Cas lifts his head, seeming shocked but interested in that particular response. “It is?”

Dean swallows nervously, but tries to cover it up with a one-shoulder shrug. “I mean, at least it’s out there now. For both of us.” Cas’s eyebrows are drawn together. That adorable little pinch between them is enough to make something in his chest loosen, and with it, his lips, too. “It doesn’t have to mean anything. It’s not like I’m gonna jump you or ask you to marry me.”

“Okay,” Cas agrees, his voice quiet. “But you... you... look at me like that?”

“Been trying not to,” he confesses. “Kinda hard when you’re so awesome and we spend so much time together, though.” 

Cas sits up more fully, leaning in closer and erasing even more space between them. “I like spending time with you.”

The earnestness of Cas’s voice makes his breath get caught somewhere in his throat, but it comes out with his reply. “Good.” The single word spills out through his lips in little more than a sigh. He darts his tongue out to moisten them, prompting Cas’s eyes to fall to track the movement. _Cas is looking at his lips._ The knowledge makes his heart pound in his chest, and when Cas raises his gaze again, their eyes lock. The air between them instantly explodes with sexual chemistry, and he can literally see Cas’s eyes darken as it hits him, too. 

“Dean.” Goosebumps raise on his arms and spread down his spine. _Fuck_ Cas and the way he says his name, so low and rough in that sex voice of his that hits Dean beneath the belt every single time. “There’s—there’s things... about me... you don’t know.”

Dean’s already lost in the blue sea of Castiel's eyes, though, sinking like a stone without a hope in hell, a little bit deeper with every heartbeat. “I don’t care,” Dean declares. He’s not surprised to hear the roughness of his own voice because his throat feels like sandpaper. “I know you, Cas.”

Cas lets out a breathy little whimper as his eyes turn soft, and between one second and the next, Cas closes the remaining distance between them and presses his lips to Dean’s. Cas’s lips are soft and tentative, but as soon as Dean kisses him back, Castiel’s confidence spikes and the pressure increases. His mouth is plush and sure, his permanent five o’clock shadow prickly in the best kind of way, and Dean can’t resist bringing a hand up to cup the back of his neck to pull him in even closer. 

Cas’s lips part Dean’s with a low groan, and Dean feels heat surge low in his groin from the sound and the sensation as Cas’s tongue sweeps into his mouth. Lips and tongues slide together in a careful but surprisingly good first kiss. As it heats up, the two of them take turns leading and being lead, and Cas kisses hungrily enough that Dean’s already decided he’ll happily hand over the reins to let himself be devoured tonight when Cas suddenly wrenches his lips away. 

Dean would be embarrassed by how hard he’s breathing if the sight of Cas flushed with red, kiss-bitten lips didn’t hit him like a punch of lust to the gut. He leans in for more, gets his fingers curled into the front of Cas’s shirt and yanks until their lips come together again. 

It’s different this time, right from the start. Hungrier. Cas’s lips are even more insistent than they were before, and a particularly bold swipe of his tongue has Dean fucking moaning, right into his mouth. A rumbling against his lips tells him how Cas feels about that, and then Cas’s hands are on his shoulders, Dean’s back hits the couch beneath him, and Castiel’s hard body is laid out on top of him. A tiny little red flag niggles at the back of his mind that this is really fast, but then Cas shifts to the side and he feels the first hard press of a cock against his own for the first time in so long he damn near comes in his pants then and there.

His body moves on autopilot after that, and he’s got two hands full of Cas’s ass and the two of them grinding together in moments. Cas makes a low, sexy sound in his throat as he continues to lay assault to his lips, simultaneously managing to wipe out entire sections of Dean’s brain cells with filthy little thrusts of his hips. They move together as easy as breathing, and within minutes, they’re pawing at each other’s pants to get them down enough so they can feel each other skin-to-skin. 

Cas’s hip bones pin him into place once their cocks align, slipping between stomachs and nudging against each other while their balls rub together. Dean’s hands are on Cas’s bare ass, groping and squeezing his supple flesh as he urges him into a fast and dirty rhythm, and Cas’s hands are holding his head in place while his tongue plunders into his mouth. Their groins rock and rub and it feels unbelievable, every second heavy and heated and so fucking good that arousal builds, doubles, quadruples seemingly within seconds. 

“Cas,” he gasps. “Cas, I—”

Cas seals his lips under his jaw, sucking blood to the surface along with a broken sound as Dean goes flying head-first into his orgasm. His heartbeat pounds in his ears, his heart thunders in his chest and he goes stiff as a board for two electrifying seconds before he comes, exploding between them with several powerful spurts that take his breath away. 

“Fuck, fuck Dean. Dean, _Dean.”_

Cas thrusts as he chants his name, and on the final, raspy, _“Dean,”_ his hips stutter and Dean feels additional warmth pool between them. Teeth bite where his shoulder meets his neck, clamping down until Cas’s hips come to a complete stop and he collapses on top of Dean. 

Dean lets out a surprised breath but takes his weight easy enough, splaying his hands wide and possessive until they settle on the knobs of Castiel’s spine. 

_Still too thin,_ he thinks to himself. He’s considering what he could whip Cas up for a bedtime snack and another hundred calories when Cas’s voice eats through the silence.

“I’m married.” 

So this is what it feels like to have the carpet pulled out from you. He heard the words Cas said but they don’t make any sense in this context. Cas is _married?_ Cas was living on the god damn streets. Where the hell was his spouse, and what the fuck is Cas doing putting the moves on him if he’s got one?

“What?” is the only response his mind can make. It hangs between them for a second too long, and Dean pushes Cas up and off of him so he can at least pull up his damn pants. _I’m married_ comes back to him again and he repeats, “What do you mean you’re married?” 

Cas sits up, tucks himself away and squeezes his eyes closed as he pushes both hands into his hair. “I haven’t seen her for more than two years. We haven’t... been _married_ in any sense of the word but legally in at least three.”

Dean can only lift his hands in a vague _what the fuck_ gesture, but apparently it’s enough to prompt an apology. “I’m sorry,” Cas whispers hoarsely. “She means... less than nothing to me, I assure you. And you—Dean, you have to believe you mean the opposite. You’re everything to me. You’re all I have, and I would never _ever_ do anything to hurt you.”

Dean huffs bitterly, wondering how the hell Cas even has the balls to say that after what he just did. 

“I’m so sorry, Dean. I didn’t know _that_ was going to happen. I enjoy being close to you and I could tell you liked being close to me, too, but I guess I thought you were just... lonely or something... and I was more than willing to be there for you after everything you’ve done for me—”

Dean whips his head to the side, looking at Cas with wide eyes. “You just fucked me into the couch because you thought you _owed me_ after everything I’ve done for you?”

Castiel’s eyes go twice as wide. “No! God no, that’s not what I meant. _Fuck.”_ Cas runs his hands through his hair, then shifts, turning towards him again. “Even before this, I didn’t think you could ever like me after... seeing me so dirty and smelly and so malnourished I could hardly stand. After seeing what a mess I am. But you...” He stops, shakes his head with a fond little smile on his face. “You’re the best person I’ve ever known. Your heart is so big, and you are so kind, so caring, so _warm._ I realized I didn’t care if you liked me as long as I got to be so close to you. I wanted... anything I could get.” His voice is small when he continues, “I didn’t think something like what just happened would ever happen. If I thought there was any chance that you might want what I’ve been trying not to want since the moment I saw you, I would have tried to tell you I’m married earlier. I’m sorry.”

This is a lot of information to deal with all at once, especially when his brain still feels muddled from his orgasm. This is fucked up. _Cas is married._ To a woman. Who apparently doesn’t care that her husband was living on the streets. The thought is enough to have rage pumping through his veins, but he doesn’t have time to deal with that right now because _Cas is married_ and they just got off together. Cas _likes_ him? But Cas also said that Dean’s all he has, and the last fucking thing he needs is for Cas to have gratitude all mixed up and confusing Cas into thinking he has romantic feelings for him when he doesn’t.

It sounds like a recipe for disaster and a sure-fire way to get his heart broken. 

“Can you say something?” Cas asks, sounding scared.

Because he feels like he should at least get everything out in the open, the first thing he says is, “I do like you, Cas.” He doesn’t dare look at Cas when he says it, afraid that he’ll see hope or joy or something else that will make him do something stupid. “But it’s all kinds of complicated because of our situation and how you’re so dependent on me, and now you go throw a wrench into it like you’re married and I don’t—” _Fuck,_ it hurts to even think about what he’s about to say, and as stupid as it is, he knows he’s a little bit too late to protect his heart from breaking after all. “I’m sorry, but I don’t think anything else should happen between us.”

He can hear the click of Cas’s throat when he swallows. “I understand that, and I’m not trying to change your mind, but can I at least... try to explain?”

Dean can almost feel the walls going up around his heart, trying to protect itself from any more pain before it can even start. He doesn’t want to do this right now. Hell, he doesn’t want to do it ever, but he can start with not right now. “It’s already getting late, and you’ve got a big day tomorrow,” he tries.

“Please, Dean,” Cas begs him. “I can’t—I can’t stand the thought of you thinking less of me. Not for this.”

He sounds so wrecked, so desperate to fix it that Dean can’t make himself say no. He also can’t bring himself to look Cas in the face and see those big blue eyes of his looking sad and broken, so he keeps his eyes on the TV in front of him as he nods his permission, not seeing it at all but knowing it’s there all the same.

“Her name is Daphne. We were together on and off all through college—sometimes just the two of us, sometimes with others—and it was fun and I liked her and everything, but I never really thought of it as anything serious. But when we graduated and her parents started hinting at us getting married and she got excited, I just... went along with it. It’s not that I didn’t care about her, because I did, but even as I stood at the altar I knew it wasn’t the kind of love I should have been feeling.”

Okay, so Cas wasn’t in love with the woman he married. That doesn’t change the fact that he _is_ married. 

“Why didn’t you get a divorce?”

“This is... I can’t even explain to you h-how hard this is to talk about,” Cas starts, his voice turning into something low and shaky. “But sh-she... she got pregnant. And I figured even if we weren’t in love the right way, I should stay because we were going to have a baby. I was going to be a d-dad—” His voice breaks and he buries his face in his hands, taking in long, shaky breaths between the rest of his words. “—and I didn't want to miss anything.”

Dean has a really bad feeling about this. About all of it. About why this is so hard for Cas to talk about, about that haunted look he gets in his eyes that reminds Dean of what he sees in the mirror anytime he thinks about his mom dying, about how Cas wound up on the streets in the first place and why his wife doesn’t care.

But this is the closest he’s ever been to figuring it out, and if Cas doesn’t tell him now, he doesn’t know if he’ll ever tell him. 

**He makes sure his voice is soft and non accusatory when he asks, “What happened to the baby, Cas?”**

There’s a terrible, gut-wrenching sob that comes out of Cas before he gets a single word in response. “SIDS.”

Dean’s not much of a baby guy, but even he knows what that word stands for. Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. Most of the time babies who die from it do so without any other explanation. Healthy and breathing one second and gone the next, all while their parents sleep unknowingly either in the same room or down the hall. Dean’s only ever lost his mom, so can’t even begin to comprehend the pain of losing something that he himself created, but that doesn’t mean empathy doesn’t crack his heart in two and leave it throbbing with pain in his chest.

“Fuck. I’m—I’m so fucking sorry.”

Cas just continues to shake his head, drawing in harsh, rasping breaths. “I know it was nobody’s fault, and yet we still blamed each other. Me, because Daphne was sleeping right next to her and didn’t hear her. Daphne because I had been sleeping in the spare room instead of with my wife and child, and later, because I didn’t have our daughter added to our life insurance policy in time. We couldn’t stop fighting about it, and it—it _hurt_ to be in the house where it happened, so I moved out. I had a few paid weeks of bereavement from the office, and I used that time to get an apartment. But when my time was up, I was having a hard time going into work. Everybody—they just kept _looking at me_ like they were waiting for me to fall apart, and the worst part was that I knew I was going to. Every second of every day, all I could feel was pain. How does anybody live like that?”

He sits up before slumping back against the couch, and his voice is oddly clinical when he continues talking. “I stopped going to work. I used up all of my vacation, and then I couldn’t bring myself to go back once it was up. I lost my job. I spent all of my savings, fell behind on rent, got kicked out, lost my car, and before I knew it, I was homeless.” He sighs bitterly. “At first, I didn't even care. I was so dead inside that wandering the streets all day until I passed out somewhere was almost a relief compared to the never-ending nightmares and crushing depression I felt being at home. Surviving was something to do with myself instead of wallowing. But when it started getting cold last year, I tried to go back to Daphne for shelter and found that my house was sold. I don’t even know where she is.”

Cas laughs humorlessly, then finishes, “So that’s why I didn’t get a divorce. I don’t know where she is, and after the way things ended... I don’t really care to, either. To be completely honest with you, I didn’t think I’d ever care about anybody or anything ever again.” His voice is unbearably soft when he adds. “Until you came along.”

“Cas.”

It’s a stupid thing to say, especially given everything Cas has told him and how little he’s said in response, but what’s he supposed to say?

“And now I went and fucked that up, too,” Cas continues. “So I guess when it comes down to it, I haven’t changed as much as I thought I have.”

“You can cut that shit out right now,” Dean tells him. “Yeah, you should’ve told me you were married before you kissed me and it sucks to find out after the fact, but I’m not gonna sit here and listen to you spew lies about the rest. You _have_ changed. You got yourself healthy again, and as soon as you could, you went and got a job, which must have been a hell of a lot harder than anything I’ve ever done. Hell, Cas,” he sighs. “I can’t even imagine the strength it takes to wake up and get out of bed every morning after the shit you’ve been through. You gotta give yourself some credit.”

Cas shakes his head. “I wouldn’t have had the opportunity to get healthy, the clothes on my back, or the means of transportation to even try to get a job if it weren’t for you, and still, I kept things from you that I knew you had a right to know, all because it was easier for me to get through each day without having to explain what a failure I’ve been as a man, as a husband, as a father.”

“Cas,” Dean says again, quietly this time. “You know that wasn’t your fault.”

“Then why do I wake up every morning feeling like it is?” 

“Because your kid is dead, man,” Dean says. Cas pops his head up and looks him straight in the face for the first time in a long time, and he hopes to Christ he didn’t just say something he can never take back. “It’s _supposed_ to feel like shit. I’d be more worried if it didn’t. Shit, my mom died almost thirty years ago and it still hurts so bad sometimes I can’t breathe. It doesn’t make you a failure to feel that about your own kid, Cas. It makes you _human.”_

**To his complete and utter horror, Cas bursts into tears.**

Dean fish mouths for a second, not sure if he should apologize and take the words back or try to comfort him, but before he can even force out some semblance of words, Cas is waving him away. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry, I’m fine.”

Tears are still streaming down his face though, and it’s easy to see that he _isn’t_ fine, so Dean does what feels natural and pulls him into a hug. Cas comes without resistance, and the second he rubs down Cas’s back, he has more than six feet of sobbing man in his arms. He couldn’t be more out of his comfort zone if he actively sought it out, but he stays where he is and holds Cas, stroking his back and soothing him as much as he can until the tears finally stop.

Even then, Cas doesn’t try to move out of his hold, and he winds up with one arm slung around Cas’s shoulders while Cas leans against him. His hair is tickling the side of Dean’s face, but he doesn’t want to attempt to move Cas in case it sets him off again.

“I know you think that what I feel for you is all because of some hero-complex or something, but it’s not. It’s because of stuff like this, because you’re the kind of man who’s blunt enough to say what he’s thinking but also kind enough to take in a homeless person and listen to them cry without a word for god knows how long.”

“Only because I made you cry,” Dean points out.

“I cried because you’re right. I haven’t talked to anybody about any of this, and I’ve been so stuck in my own head about it I never gave myself the opportunity to realize that it’s human to feel so much pain. Normal, even.”

“I’m no expert or anything, but I think so. I think it’s normal to hurt every day, as shitty as it is, as long as you can still get up and do shit through it. It’s when you can’t get out of bed and can’t go to work that becomes a problem, and then even that doesn’t mean you’re a failure, it just means you need a little bit of extra help.” Cas didn’t have that when he needed it, but he has it now, and Dean wants him to know that. “I’m sorry you didn’t have anybody around to help you when you needed it, but you’ve kicked that shit in the ass. Yeah, it still hurts and it’s probably always going to hurt, but you’re dragging yourself out of bed now and you’re gonna go to work tomorrow morning and kick that in the ass, too. And on the days when you feel like you can’t, I’ll be here to remind you that you can. You don’t have to do all this shit on your own anymore. We can do it together.”

“As friends,” Cas comments.

It kills him to say it, but he agrees. “For now, yeah. I think... I think we gotta keep it friends only until you’re back on your feet. Give yourself a couple weeks to start bringing home a paycheck, start contributing to the household financially, and start saving up so that we both know you aren’t only staying with me because you have to.”

“I already know that,” Cas says.

It makes him smile a little, but he sticks to his guns. “It’s not that I don’t believe you, but I just... I gotta know for sure before I put myself out there any more than I already have.”

“I understand.” Cas sits up, leaving space between them for the first time in so long Dean can’t help but think how wrong it feels. “If you could try not to look so infuriatingly handsome in sweat pants and t-shirts, it might help make this a little bit easier.”

Dean feels heat rise to his cheeks, but shoots him a cocky smile he hopes can overpower it. “Hate to break it to you, Cas, but if you think I look good in sweatpants and a t-shirt, I don’t really know how to tone it down any more from there.”

“I suppose I’ll have to continue to suffer in silence, then,” Cas says, offering a half-hearted attempt at a joke. “I know I’ve asked you for more than I’ll ever be able to repay already, but can I ask you one more thing?”

“‘course.”

“When I have enough money saved up, will you help me find Daphne so I can get a divorce?” That only makes his smile grow, and because it feels wrong to smile about something like that, he tries to force it down. He knows he doesn’t succeed entirely though, because Cas’s mouth quirks up on one side. “If we get to a place where we can really be together, I want it to be just me and you.”

It physically pains him to keep the space between them, but he gives into the urge to reach over to cover Cas’s hand with his. He gives it a little squeeze, telling himself friends hold hands sometimes, too, then says, “I want that, too.” They gaze at each other for a few seconds, letting the reality of the next stage of their friendship sink in, then Dean removes his hand and swipes both palms down his thighs. “So, you feel better about work tomorrow now?” he asks, mostly joking.

Thankfully, Cas laughs. “I’m sure it won’t be as bad as that conversation was.”

“Amen to that,” Dean says back. “You go in at ten, right?”

“Yes. Ten to three tomorrow.”

“I figured you might have a hard time, so I got the morning off to drive you. If you don’t want me to anymore because of all this tonight—”

“I want you there,” Cas declares, cutting him off. “You have no idea how much that eases my nerves, Dean. Thank you.”

“You got it,” Dean replies. “I’m uh, gonna head up to bed. Shower,” he says, looking down at his shirt and crotch as he stands to let Cas know it’s because he’s still got jizz all over him. “I’ll make a big breakfast tomorrow morning to get your day off on a good start, so don’t eat without me, alright?”

“You know you don’t have to do that.”

Dean nods and makes sure to catch Cas’s eyes to say, “I do know.” He walks to the front and back doors to check the locks, and then on his way through the living room again, he says, “If you get freaked out again and wanna talk...”

Cas blushes and ducks his head, making him wonder how frequently Cas hid his face to try to hide his blush before this. “Are we okay?” he asks.

Dean speaks honestly. “Might be a little weird at first now that I know what your _o face_ looks like.” _And now that I know you can rock my world in the sack._ “But it’ll pass. I’m not goin’ anywhere.”

Cas gives him a little smile for that. “Goodnight, Dean.”

“‘Night, Cas.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **CHAPTER WARNING:** Castiel mentions the death of his child due to Sudden Infant Death Syndrome and explains that's why he's homeless. He doesn't go into detail about the death, only the aftermath, but to help you skip any mentions at all, I have made two sentences **bold** in this chapter. Do not read between them, and you should be fine <3


	4. Chapter 4

It actually isn’t all that weird the next day at all. What _is_ weird is the sexual tension that hangs between them every time they so much as look at each other. It makes Dean wonder if Cas thinks about how fucking hot it was rutting on the couch like a couple of teenagers the way he does whenever they get pulled into that intense eye contact, or if Cas is maybe thinking about what else they could do together. When Cas’s eyes dip down to stare at his lips, is he thinking about them wrapped around his cock? Is he contemplating making a move the way Dean does multiple times a day, every single fucking day?

Yeah, this whole friends thing was his idea, but he had no idea how difficult it would really be to share a house with somebody he’s becoming more and more attracted to every day. It might even be worse knowing that Cas is just as attracted to him, because that means the _option_ to act on the spark is constantly taunting him. He’s asked himself a million times if he’s doing the right thing, if it might be easier for them both to just give into it and fuck each other’s brains out while they obviously want it so bad, but he can’t make himself do it.

Mostly because with every day that passes, it becomes more and more clear that he isn’t just physically attracted to Cas. He likes him a lot, too. Each day he comes home from work to see Cas smiling and feeling good about finishing another shift at work makes his heart fill a little more. When Cas talks with pride about mastering the slurpee machine and up-selling lottery tickets, Dean feels proud of him, too. When he swings by to pick Cas up on his first Saturday shift and goes inside to pick up a pack of gum and some jerky just to see him in action, his heart damn near flies out of his chest when he gets a glimpse of Cas in his little blue Gas N Sip vest. And that’s _before_ Cas catches sight of him and smiles so big his face nearly cracks in half, and it’s in that moment that he realizes staying “just friends” hasn’t been doing him a favor at all. 

And he still doesn’t do anything about it. 

He and Cas stay friends, keeping a safe distance between them when they’re on the couch and crowding into each other anytime they’re in public, eagerly seeking out any and all “friendly” touches they can get away with in front of other people where things can’t get out of hand. In an unspoken agreement, neither of them drink anything more than a single beer, probably because they both know exactly how quickly things can (and will) spiral out of control with alcohol in their systems.

The day Cas brings home his first paycheck, they sit down and make up a budget. Considering Cas is only making a few bucks over minimum wage and Dean was managing just fine on his own before Cas came along, they agree Cas will only pay for a portion of the groceries, a bus pass to get to and from work when Dean is working, and his own meals when they eat out. That works well for about a month, and then Nora asks Cas if he can start picking up extra hours. Within a month, Cas is not only working full-time, but flourishing and moving into a management position that increases his wages. That’s when Dean adds him onto his cell phone plan, so Cas starts paying his portion of that, as well, and Dean accepts a meager $100 per pay for rent. What he really wants is for Cas to save the rest of his money, and he keeps telling him that every time they talk about what Cas should do with the money he has left over each pay.

Things are good, but undeniably _charged_ between them when Sam and Eileen show up for their first visit almost three months after Cas first moved in. Dean’s been nervous for days, wondering exactly how Cas will do with Eileen and if he and Sam will get along, and it isn’t missed on him that the reason he’s so nervous about it is because it matters so much. Without even meaning to, he’s started to think of the future with Cas in it, and if Cas and Sam don’t get along well, that’s going to be a problem.

Thankfully, it’s nothing to worry about. Cas keeps shooting him fond smiles that border on _adoring_ as he paces the kitchen waiting for Sam and Eileen’s arrival, and the second Sam’s stupid hybrid pulls into the driveway, he’s running out the door and down the stairs with Cas right behind him. Sam’s barely even out of the SUV before Dean’s got him pulled into a bone-crunching hug, and he’s blinking furiously to keep the tears from his eyes as he _finally_ has his baby brother in his sight once again. 

The only reason he breaks away is because he hears Eileen’s voice say, “Excuse me, what am I? Chopped liver?”

His heart swells with love for her, for the one person he knows loves his brother (almost) as much as he does, and he slaps Sam on the back a couple of times before he lets him go in favor of swooping Eileen right up off of her feet in another lasting hug. 

He waits until they pull apart to say, “You know I missed you, sis,” so that she can see his lips, and he’s rewarded with a beautiful smile in return. “I swear, you get hotter every time I see you.”

Sam huffs an annoyed sound, but Eileen lights up. “You know it,” she says sassily.

And that right there is part of the reason he loves her so much. She’s fun, and when Dean isn’t around, he knows she reminds Sam to loosen up every now and then. 

“You guys have been cooped up in the car for a while, come on in and stretch out a little. We’ll grab your shit before bed.” Cas is still standing on the steps, a smile shining in his eyes, and Dean claps him on the back, too, as he approaches him. “We’ll get inside and then I’ll introduce everybody,” Dean says, loud enough so Sam can hear him, too.

Once they step inside, Sam and Eileen both take off their shoes, and they all make their way over to the living room. Dean grabs a chair from the kitchen table and drags it over next to the couch, then waves Cas away when Cas says, “You take the couch.”

“Nah, I’m fine.”

“Dean,” Cas says sternly. “Go sit with your family.”

Because that sounds damn good to him, he relents and lets Cas take the seat. “Before I do that, let me actually introduce you guys.” He whacks Sam on the arm to get his attention, then says, “Sammy, this is Cas. Cas, this is Sam.”

His heart does that _too big for his chest_ thing when Cas holds out a hand to shake and Sam pulls him in for a hug instead. He sees Eileen watching him with her head tilted and purposely schools his face into a more blank expression for when Cas and Sam pull apart. 

“Dean didn’t tell me you were so tall,” Cas says to Sam.

“He hates being shorter than me.”

“Bullshit,” Dean disagrees. “I’m perfectly fine being able to buy clothes at a regular store instead of one made for giant-sized people, thank you very much.” Because it’s something he’s said a hundred times, he turns his attention to Eileen instead of waiting for Sam’s response. “Eileen, this is Cas.” 

He knows some basic sign language, so he watches carefully when Eileen signs out C-A-S and adds a flourish of her hands. 

“What does that mean?” Cas asks.

“I’m guessing it’s your name sign,” Dean explains. It’s basically the sign for _blue,_ but instead of Eileen holding her hand straight, it’s in the shape of a letter _c._

“Figured he needed one,” Eileen says, signing as she speaks. “Hi, Cas.” She signs his name again, making Cas smile this time, and adds, “Nice to meet you in person.”

“Nice to meet you, too,” Cas says. “I did a little reading about ASL when Dean told me you were deaf, so forgive me if I mess this up, but...” Then he stops, and slowly signs, “Welcome.”

Eileen lights up with another big smile, and she signs back as she replies, “That was great. Thank you.” She holds her arms out, and Cas blushes, but goes in for a quick hug from her, too. 

When they’re done, Dean says, “Alright, take a seat. You want a drink or anything?”

“Honestly, coffee would be great,” Sam replies. 

Eileen nods her agreement but Cas is on his feet before Dean even moves. “I can get it. Sit and visit.”

He wants to argue, but he wants to sit and talk with Sam and Eileen more. “Thanks, Cas. They both take it black. Buncha weirdos.”

As soon as his back is turned, Eileen signs, _He’s cute._

Dean flushes, but nods. No use denying that; he’s got eyes, after all. 

She signs something else that he doesn’t catch, and Sam snorts a laugh. “What?” Dean asks.

Sam whispers, “She asked if you’re friends with benefits.”

“No,” Dean whispers back. “You haven’t been here for three months and _that’s_ what you want to talk about in the first three minutes?”

“We want you to be happy,” Eileen says quietly.

Dean rolls his eyes in response but doesn’t get into it anymore right now. They’ll see that he’s happier now with Cas as his friend than he has been in longer than he can remember, he just has to give them time. “How’re you two doing? How was the drive?”

“It was good,” Sam says. “Traffic wasn’t bad, and Eileen only compared my driving to a grandpa—what?—six times?”

“Out loud,” Eileen corrects, which makes Dean laugh.

“I can’t tell you the joy it brings me to know you give him a hard time when I can’t,” Dean says to her.

“She wouldn’t even let me grab a salad in the drive-thru on the way here.” It sounds like a complaint, but Sam’s smiling so warmly at Eileen there’s no way it counts.

“You don’t order _salad_ at a fast food place,” Eileen says to them both.

“Wow, are you sure it’s not you and Eileen who are related, Dean?” Cas says as he walks in from the kitchen with two mugs of coffee in his hands. He places them on the coffee table, then takes his seat as Sam and Eileen both chuckle.

“Not the first time we’ve heard that,” Dean says. 

“I’m sure you know that Dean’s practically allergic to salad,” Cas comments.

“I’d use that as an excuse to never eat it if anybody’d believe me.”

Sam shoots Cas a smile. “How do you live with him?”

“Some days it’s a struggle.” Cas says it with a big sigh as if he’s hard done by, and it makes Dean shake his head with a smile on his face. 

“You are so full of shit,” he tells Cas. 

Cas’s face cracks on a smile as soon as he looks at Dean. “Yeah, but they don’t know that.”

Eileen chirps in with, “You know, I haven’t heard Dean complain about living with you at all. You must be getting along pretty well.”

“Don’t worry, he complains about me plenty to my face,” Cas says. “But yes, Dean’s easy to get along with as long as I don’t talk to him in the morning.”

“How long did it take you to figure that out?” Sam wonders, grinning. 

“First morning.”

“Smart guy,” Sam says. “Actually, that reminds me, I don’t even know what you do.”

Dean’s heart sinks, wondering how Cas is going to feel about saying he works at a gas station. 

“I was a partner at an accounting firm a few years ago, but I had some mental health problems that resulted in me losing my job. It took me some time and a lot of kindness from strangers to get me back into the workforce. I wanted to start small so I didn’t overwhelm myself with too much too fast, so I took a retail job. It isn’t glorious by any means, but I work for good people, it’s honest work, and it pays the bills,” Cas says with a shrug. 

“Plus, it’s keeping you stable,” Eileen adds. “And that counts for something, too.”

Sam nods his agreement. “There’s nothing wrong with doing what you have to do in order to get by. Finding a roommate probably took a lot of stress off of you financially, too. Smart.”

Dean can almost feel the stress rolling off of _him._ He should have known Sam and Eileen, people who advocate for disabilities on a daily basis, wouldn’t judge anybody for doing what they have to do in order to get by. 

“And necessary,” Cas says with a laugh. “I’m happier now than I ever was as an accountant, too. So what they say is true—money isn’t everything.” 

Sam bobs his head once more, smiling kindly before he turns his attention over to Dean. “I was right, he is a smart guy.”

“He has his moments,” Dean says dryly, which gets a laugh from almost everybody. “Hey, what’d you do with that mutt of yours for the weekend?”

“Bobby kept him,” Sam explains. “He grumbled about it for a while, but Bones was curled up on Bobby’s lap on the recliner before we even pulled out of the driveway.”

“I always said the tough guy thing was an act. He’s a big softie at heart,” Eileen says knowingly. 

“Maybe that’s where Dean gets it from,” Cas comments, surprising Dean with the _softie_ take on his personality. 

“No maybe about it,” Eileen says knowingly. 

Sam grins while Dean sits silently stunned. “You both think Dean’s a softie?”

Eileen says, “Oh yeah.”

At the same time Cas says, “Definitely.”

Sam’s looking at him smugly, like he’s known that all along and _finally_ has backup to prove it, and it makes his face burn for reasons he doesn’t even understand. “Alright, that’s enough outta the peanut gallery. What do you guys want me to whip up for dinner? We bought some nice steaks, a couple of pasta options, and ground beef for—”

“Burgers!” Eileen exclaims. “We want your burgers!”

Dean huffs a little, then turns to share a smile with Cas. “Sounds like the lady has spoken.”

“Gotta love a woman who knows what she wants,” Cas agrees. 

“I curse my luck every day that Sam met her first,” Dean says. 

“Sucks to be you,” Sam says smugly, wrapping his arm around his wife. 

As they continue to chat and catch up as the afternoon passes, Sam and Eileen ask Cas questions sporadically enough that they seem interested without grilling the guy, and every time Cas says something that makes everybody laugh, Dean feels his heart fill just a little bit more. It’s easy being with what’s left of his family and Cas at the same time, and it brings him a sense of peace he’s never experienced before. 

Cas fits, and it only makes him fall a little bit more in love with him. 

It hits him all of the sudden that even if he didn’t realize it when it started, that’s how it’s been since the beginning. He fell for Cas gradually, a little bit more every time he learned something new about him, and now, even though they’re supposed to be just friends, he’s pretty damn sure that somewhere along the way, he fell completely. He hasn’t been in love for so long it _should_ be scary, but it creeped up on him sneakily enough that he didn’t have a chance to try to fight it before it was too late. 

And now he’s there. 

In love with his roommate with nothing but his own stupid scruples (and let’s be honest, a heart-stopping fear of losing one of the brightest parts of his life) keeping them apart. As the day turns into night and he and Cas work in the kitchen elbow-to-elbow cooking dinner for Sam and Eileen, he finds himself distinctly warm inside, feeling almost _floaty_ with how happy he is with all of his favorite people together in the same space. The beer flowing between the four of them and the joy bursting inside of him makes it hard to keep his distance from Cas, and even though he’s aware of Eileen’s eyes on them anytime they share their usual over-friendly touches, he can’t find it in him to try to stop. 

It feels _right._

It’s also safe to say he isn’t necessarily surprised when Eileen pulls him aside after dark. “Help me grab our bags?”

“I got it, hon,” Sam offers.

Eileen lifts her eyebrows. “You think I can’t carry my own stuff?”

Sam deflates almost immediately. “You’re right. Sorry.” Dean sees him turn to Cas and say, “Old habits die hard,” but he doesn’t get a chance to hear what Cas says back before Eileen is basically pushing him out of his own house.

He waits until she can see him to say, “What’s got your panties in a twist?”

“You _like_ Cas!”

Automatically, he denies it. “No, I don’t!” She doesn’t even have to say anything, because he knows he wasn’t able to sell that at all. “I’ll work on it.”

“Why don’t you just ask him out? He obviously likes you back.”

“It’s complicated,” Dean says honestly. “What if it doesn’t work out and he moves out?”

“You’ve already been living together for months. If you haven’t killed each other yet, there’s no reason why adding romance into the mix should change that.”

“I know, but...” He hems and haws a little, then comes right out with it. “Please don’t make a big deal out of this, but I’m kinda giving him a break on his half of the rent since he isn’t making much and I don’t really need the cash. I don’t want him thinking he’s into me when he’s really just grateful or something.”

“Have you talked about it?” Dean nods. “And? Did he do something to make you think he was only interested in you because of your money?”

“No, of course not.”

She crosses her arms over her chest and squints her eyes. “I don’t know if I’m not understanding you right, or if you’re really just that much of a dumbass.” Dean huffs a dry laugh, because leave it to Eileen to put him in his place. “If you don’t think he’s just here to use you, what’s the problem?”

“I—I think I’m in love with him.”

Her eyes go all doe-eyed and soft, and she’s already reaching out for a hug as she says, “Awww.” She squeezes him for a few seconds, then pulls away enough to cup his face in her hands. “You really are a dumbass.”

He knocks her hands away with a laugh and runs a hand down his face nervously. “I’m scared shitless.”

“That’s how you know it’s real love,” she says, smiling at him. “You should talk to your brother. He was a big scaredy cat at first, too.”

Dean perks up a little at that. “Yeah?”

“Oh yeah. I don’t know if Cas has it in him to give your ass a kick the way I did Sam, but luckily, you have me, too.”

Dean laughs humorlessly. “Yeah, I don’t think you’re giving Cas enough credit. The big eyes and the gummy smile make him look all cute and cuddly, but he’s as stubborn as they come, trust me.”

She smiles wide. “Glad to hear it. Let’s grab the stuff before Sam sends out a search party.”

Dean laughs for real this time, because they both know that’s totally something his brother would do. Eileen pops the trunk and they each grab a bag, but before they head into the house, he touches her elbow to get her attention and signs, _I love you._

She smiles again, softer this time, and says, “I know,” before she walks into the house. 

“What did you do, get lost?” Sam asks.

“Tried to convince her to run away with me again, but for reasons I’ll never understand, she’s still sticking with the younger, nerdier, gassier Winchester.”

“For better or for worse,” Eileen declares. She pauses to let out a deep, long yawn that Dean suspects isn’t entirely genuine, but Sam’s all over it anyway.

“You tired, babe?”

She nods. “A bit. It was a long day with the drive.”

“I’m actually sorta beat, too,” Sam says. 

“The room is ready for you,” Cas tells them. “I’ve moved most of my things out of the way, and there’s fresh sheets on the bed.”

“Are you crashing on the couch?” Sam asks him.

“Yep. I had pneumonia a while back so I spent quite a bit of time napping on it, so thankfully I know how comfortable it is,” Cas explains. “It’s no trouble at all.”

“Why don’t you just sleep with Dean?” Eileen asks. 

“I’m sorry, what?” Dean repeats, his face already flaming and his stomach tying itself into knots. Sam huffs a laugh too, and he’s sure Cas is doing something similar (though he’s too chicken shit to look) because Eileen looks between them like they’re all weird for being confused about this. 

“You’re just friends right?” she asks, batting her eyelashes innocently.

Oh, she’s the devil in sheep’s clothing, and he is going to _kill her_ for this later. Dean’s forced to answer, “Yeah.”

“And you have a king sized bed. What’s the big deal? You’re obviously not a homophobe,” she jokes.

Sam laughs and turns to the both of them, signing as he speaks. “She’s got a point. I’ve bunked with buddies before and it wasn’t weird. Hell, you and me have shared a bed more times than I can count.”

“And if Cas is out here on the couch, I’d wake him up if I had to walk past him to use the bathroom,” Eileen says. “He could really startle me if he woke up and I couldn’t see him.”

He _knows_ she’s using that as an excuse, but he can’t exactly call her on it in front of Sam without explaining why he doesn’t want to sleep next to Cas. And Cas, the big-hearted buffoon that he is, says, “I don’t want to scare her, Dean. I wouldn’t want to impose, but... if you don’t mind... I swear you won’t even know I’m there. I don’t snore or anything.”

 _This is a terrible fucking idea._

One that he leaps at with gusto. 

“I mean, yeah. It’s like they said. No big deal, right?”

Eileen smiles brightly. “So that’s settled then. Excellent. I’m going to bed. I’ll see you two in the morning.”

They all exchange _goodnights_ and _see you tomorrows,_ and within minutes, he and Cas are left alone in the living room with the knowledge that they’re about to share a bed for the first time. 

“I have money saved,” Cas says quietly. “I could get a hotel room for tonight if you’re really not comfortable.”

Dean’s heart thunders in his chest. “Are _you_ not comfortable?”

“I’m fine with it. I just didn’t want you to feel forced into doing something you don’t want to do.”

Dean tries to put on a brave face before he says, “It’s not a big deal. We’re friends, right?”

He doesn’t miss the way Cas’s face falls, or the way his normally bright eyes seem to dull before Cas nods his head. “Right. Do you want to watch an episode or two of _Schitt’s Creek_ before we head upstairs?”

They’ve been bingeing it, and since it always puts a smile on his face and makes the both of them laugh, Dean decides that’s a good way to clear the air before things inevitably get awkward again. “Yeah, let’s do that.”

It’s only a few minutes into the first episode, with Castiel’s thigh pressed comfortably against his, that he feels himself begin to relax. This is normal for them. This feels good. They end up watching four episodes before they decide to call it a night, and like every night, Cas goes to do his before bed stuff in the downstairs bathroom while Dean checks the locks and goes upstairs to do the same. 

He’s brushed his teeth and is changed into pajama pants and a worn plain grey tee shirt when Cas gently raps his knuckles on Dean’s bedroom door. He calls out for Cas to come inside, and the second the door closes behind him, it’s like all the air is sucked out of the room with it. Cas, too, is down to a black tee and plaid pajama pants, and there’s something about his bare feet standing in Dean’s bedroom that makes his insides feel funny. 

He swallows hard, trying to ignore the way heat is steadily creeping down his neck, and says, “Don’t you look cozy.”

“As do you.” A single beat of silence, and then, “This doesn’t have to be weird.”

“It’s not,” Dean lies. 

“Really?” Cas deadpans. 

Instead of answering, he says, “Just get your ass in the bed.”

“I thought you’d never ask.”

Yeah, _that_ helps. But when he lifts his gaze to hit Cas with a glare, he’s smiling, and Dean finds himself laughing in response. “You’re such a dick.”

“Just trying to lighten the mood a little.” They each climb into bed using the side they’re closest to, and there’s a bit of shuffling around until they both seem to settle into comfortable positions. _“Good god_ this is comfortable,” Cas says with gusto. “Is it made from an actual cloud?”

“Memory foam,” Dean explains. 

“It’s amazing.”

“Compared to the old ass mattress you sleep on, I guess so,” Dean says around a smile. 

He feels Cas’s eyes on him for a few seconds before Cas rolls over onto his side facing him. “Dean?”

“Yeah?”

“Thanks for letting me be here when Sam and Eileen came to visit. I had a really nice day.”

Dean wouldn’t be surprised if he melted straight into the mattress. “You’re always welcome here.”

“Dean.” This time, Cas waits until Dean turns over onto his side, too. Looking at Cas lying in his bed with his dark hair on Dean’s pillow and those blue eyes of his somehow bright even in the dark takes his breath away, and he’s suddenly sure that he couldn’t make words if he had to. “I found somebody who's renting out a bedroom. Four hundred dollars a month, and it’s close enough to the Gas N Sip that I could walk and save myself the money from a bus pass.”

He feels like he was just stabbed in the heart with a dull knife. The pain is harrowing, spreading from his chest to his stomach and all the way to his toes in a single heartbeat, and now he can’t make words for an entirely different reason. 

Is this what it feels like to have your heart broken? How do people _survive_ more than a minute of this? 

“I don’t want to leave,” Cas continues, and finally, Dean’s able to get a decent breath. “But I’ll have enough saved for first and last when I get my next paycheck. If you want me to move out so we can figure our stuff out, I can give the man a call and see if it’s still available.”

“No.” Dean’s voice is hardly more than a whisper. “I want you to stay.”

Slowly, Cas reaches out until his big hand works itself into Dean’s. Dean’s heart is pounding so hard, he wouldn’t be surprised if Cas could hear it. “I want to stay, too,” Cas whispers back. He squeezes Cas’s hand while he tries to make his throat and his mouth remember how to work together to force some words out. “Do you... do you still have romantic feelings for me?”

“Yeah,” Dean breathes. 

Cas smiles, small but so fucking soft it makes his heart skip a beat. “I care about you so much, Dean. But sometimes it’s... it can be _hard_ being close to you but not being with you the way I want to be. Why do we have to keep waiting?”

_Because I’m scared._

He can’t say that, so he approaches it in a roundabout way. “Can you promise me something?” 

“Depends on what it is,” Cas says, sounding almost normal instead of like he’s about to shit the bed like Dean. 

“If we give this a shot and it doesn’t work out...” Fuck, why is it so hard to just say this out loud? “The thing is—I just—I don’t wanna lose you.”

Cas scooches closer, and his fingers slide between Dean’s until they’re properly holding hands. “I could never hurt you,” Cas promises. 

The words soothe him, but at the same time, he’s hyper aware that that’s not what he asked. “Would you leave?” Cas squints his eyes, letting him know he isn’t following. “If we give this a shot and you realize a month later you can do better or that I’m a bigger asshole than you thought I was or that I’m a really shitty boyfriend... are you gonna just pack up and go?”

“I know you want me to say no, but I can’t do that,” Cas says sadly. Even though that’s what he suspected from somebody as straight-forward as Cas is, it still sucks to hear it. “But what I _can_ promise is to always be your friend. Whether I’m in the room next door, here beside you in your bed, or a few streets away, I can promise that you will never lose me entirely. Never.”

Dean nods, exhaling shakily while he tries to find his balance between relieved and disappointed. Will it be enough if Cas _does_ move out if they break up but they’re able to stay friends afterwards?

“Is that why you’ve been hesitating?” Cas asks carefully. “Because you’re afraid we’ll break up and I’ll move out?” 

“I like having you here,” Dean replies. “The thought of _not_ having you here, of me fucking up so bad that it means I don’t get you at all, it...” He pauses. He has to in order to gather the courage to keep talking. “...it scares the shit out of me, man.”

Cas rubs his thumb over the back of Dean’s hand. “That scares me, too,” he admits. “But it might not happen. Maybe you and me... maybe we’ll get along as well as a couple as we have as roommates.”

“Maybe we won’t,” Dean says.

Cas brings their hands to his mouth and presses a kiss to Dean’s knuckles. “But what if we do? Think about it: everything we already share together, _plus_ sex?” Dean can’t help it, he huffs out a laugh. “You can’t tell me that doesn’t sound appealing.”

“‘course it does,” Dean agrees. “And it’s not like I haven’t wanted that every minute of every day since the last time. I just...”

“You’re scared,” Cas says plainly. He fucking hates to admit it again, but it seems like Cas has read between the lines well enough anyway, so he nods. “May I make a suggestion?”

“Yeah.”

“I like you, you like me. We’re attracted to each other, already know we’re sexually compatible, and to complicate matters even further, we literally live in the same house.”

“You’re not really talkin’ me into this, Cas,” Dean says honestly.

“I propose we take things one step at a time. The same way we’ve been doing everything else.” _Now_ Cas has his attention, because their record shows that _one step at a time_ has worked out pretty well for them so far. “Let’s go on a date.”

His heart flips in his chest, but this time with joy, not nerves or fear. “You wanna date me?”

“I want to do many things to you, Dean Winchester, but dating is definitely one of them.”

Arousal spikes low in his gut so fast he can’t possibly hold in a sharp intake of breath, but he lets it out in a laugh almost as quickly. “What happened to one step at a time, perv?”

“I know it’s been a while, but it’s my understanding that dating typically comes before sex. Hence, one step at a time.”

“Guess we already fucked that one up, huh?”

Cas smiles, seeming to transform into the guy he’s gotten used to living with rather than the guy who makes his breath catch and his heart stop. “Oh, we’ve fucked it all up. Lived together first, fooled around second, caught feelings third, and _then_ started dating.” Dean nods his agreement, amused now that Cas put it like that. “But I wouldn’t change any of it so far.”

Annnnd there’s the guy who makes his heart flip again. “Me neither.”

“Can I push my luck again?”

Dean snickers. “Don’t you always?”

“Just for tonight... can I hold you? Or let you hold me?”

Dean doesn’t hesitate at all before he scooches in the rest of the way, and just like everything else when it comes to Cas, they fit together without even having to try. His head finds the perfect spot on Cas’s shoulder easily, and his hand lays comfortably on Cas’s chest. Cas’s arm curves around his back and his hand rests on Dean’s hip. The other hand covers Dean’s, and it’s so fucking simple, so _domestic_ and right that Dean can’t even deny it to himself: he really is a softie.

And he’s absolutely, positively in love with Castiel.

It’s funny that the confirmation doesn’t scare him as much as it might have before they talked, but he guesses that’s the whole point of actually talking shit out like grown ups. It wasn’t even that bad, all things considered. Whether that’s because he and Cas have always been able to get through to one another, or if he’s just growing up or something, he doesn’t know, but it wasn’t nearly as painful as he always anticipated having a heart-to-heart with a girlfriend or boyfriend might be. Hell, maybe he shouldn’t have been avoiding them his whole life after all, he thinks with a rueful smile to himself.

If he was ever stupid enough to bring any of these thoughts up to Sam or Eileen, he’s sure he’d hear a pretty long chorus of, “I told you so.” Which reminds him he should probably ask Cas about how they’re going to act tomorrow in front of Sam and Eileen. They’re planning on staying over again tomorrow night since it’s Easter long weekend, and considering Eileen already has her eyes on them, she’s bound to notice a shift between them.

“Hey,” he says quietly. Cas doesn’t budge, nor does he respond. “Cas?” he whispers. He lifts his head to look up at Cas, and sees him fast asleep. It’s oddly endearing to learn Cas is one of those ‘hit the pillow and die’ types of people, and while a part of him resents how easily it is for Cas to fall asleep, another part of him is glad to see somebody he cares about getting a good sleep on a good mattress.

The fact that he just so happens to have Dean in his arms while he’s out like a light has very little to do with it.

Really.  
  
He wakes up alone, and doesn’t even realize it’s weird until he’s halfway down the stairs and hears voices coming from the living room. Sam and Eileen are here, and he spent the night with Cas. He fell asleep _cuddling_ Cas after agreeing to go on a date with him. Nerves hit him like a freight train. Being nervous to walk down his own stairs before coffee isn’t something he’s familiar with, and definitely not something he wants to repeat. 

“Look what the cat dragged in,” Sam says.

Dean just waves him away and makes his way to the coffee machine where Cas already has his K-Cup loaded and a mug underneath. He would smile if he wasn’t such a miserable excuse for a human being before caffeine. He does search out Cas, who he apparently walked right past without noticing thanks to his tunnel vision for coffee, and makes fleeting eye contact while the machine gurgles behind him. Cas’s little smile makes his stomach flip, and because it is _way_ too early to have to deal with that, he looks away as quickly as he possibly can.

He hears Eileen and Sam chatting about something, but doesn’t really tune into it until he’s at the table and has his first euphoric sip of caffeine. It sounds like they’re talking about what they want to do today, and since there isn’t a whole lot of options considering everything’s closed for Easter, they wind up deciding on a couple of movies to watch and a Mario Trilogy Tournament this afternoon to decide the champion of Super Smash Bros, Mario Party, and Mario Kart. Once that’s decided, they all take turns getting ready for the day. Sam’s in the shower while Eileen is doing her hair, and that leaves him and Cas alone at the kitchen table for the first time so far today.

They both know it, too, which is evident by the way their eyes immediately find each other and lock, holding heated eye-contact. “Hello, Dean.”

It’s fucking ridiculous that he blushes just from the way Cas says his name, but he somehow manages to cram so much fondness in the single syllable. “Morning, sunshine.”

“How did you sleep?”

“Not as well as you did,” he says affectionately. “You were out like a light, man.”

“I _did_ mention that your mattress felt like a cloud, didn’t I?” 

“And here I thought it was the company,” Dean quips.

Cas smiles for real now, a big one that stretches his lips and puts little laugh lines around the corners of his mouth. “Speaking of company, I was wondering, do you wrap around all of your friends like a vine in your sleep?”

Because that’s a very Dean thing to do and he knows Cas likely isn’t making it up, his face grows hot from the question. Even so, he flashes his most dazzling, cockiest smile and says, “Only the really sexy ones.” 

It works, and now it’s Cas’s turn to flush red, all the way to the tips of his ears faster than Dean thought anybody _could_ blush. “Okay, point proven. I’ll be nice,” Cas relents. “I really did sleep very, very well, and it only had to do with the mattress a little bit.”

Honest to god, it’s downright _embarrassing_ how much of a thirteen year old girl he feels like right now. What the hell is it about Cas that has him turning into a love-drunk teenager every time he says anything remotely sweet? Before he knows it, he’ll be batting his eyelashes and doodling Cas’s name in a sea of hearts on the front of his binder. 

He shoves it down as fast as he possibly can, making his insides feel like a horribly corny Valentine’s Day popper or something, and any second now glitter and heart-shaped confetti is going to come bursting out of his chest like a cannon. 

“Well, there’s room on it again tonight if you want.”

Cas seems to sit up a little straighter after that. “Yeah?”

Dean shrugs his shoulders to make it seem like he isn’t as keen on it as he really is. “It was nice.”

Cas tilts his head fondly and says, “I liked sleeping with you, too.”

His insides are decidedly gooey now, but when he hears the hair dryer turn off upstairs he realizes Eileen and Sam are about to join them again and remembers what he wanted to talk to Cas about before he fell asleep last night. “Before Sam and Eileen come down again, I just wanted to make sure... still friends, right? Until we go out—i-if you still want to,” he stutters as he realizes Cas may have already changed his mind about that. 

“I do still want to,” Cas says, soothing his unspoken fear immediately. “You’re asking me to keep things strictly friendly between us while your brother and sister-in-law are here?”

“Pretty much.”

“I can do that, but I really don’t think there’s much point.”

Dean squints in confusion. “Why not?”

“Sam asked me this morning how long we’ve really been together,” Cas says, laughter in his eyes. “I told him we weren’t, repeatedly, but he just shook his head and let me know he didn’t believe me by saying things like, ‘He’ll tell me when he’s ready, I guess.’”

“Wait, wasn’t Eileen there? Did she tell him about last night?”

“What does Eileen know about last night?” Cas wonders.

“Nothing,” Dean says quickly. Too quickly, if the look of disbelief on Cas’s face is anything to go by. “Okay, not _nothing,_ but nothing that you don’t already know.”

“Huh. She put a month’s worth of laundry duty on the line against Sam, betting that we aren’t a couple.”

Dean grins, and as he’s reminded of what exactly Eileen pushed him and Cas into last night, he says, “Eileen is a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Don’t forget it.”

“So when she was asking me earlier if I have feelings for you... I shouldn’t have said yes?”

He _knows_ Cas likes him, and still, hearing him say it like it’s no big deal has him feeling all warm inside again. “You said yes?”

He feels Cas’s foot tap against his under the table, then the top of his foot slide under the arch of Dean’s. “I’m not a very good liar.”

Cas looks almost bashful from that little admission, and Dean hears himself say, “That ain’t a bad thing.” Cas’s smile turns genuine after that, and Dean’s fingers itch to reach forward to cover Cas’s hand with his. The idea that he could do that, that Cas might actually like it if he did, gives him a little boost of confidence, and he slides his hand across the table between them slowly, but with purpose.

Of fucking course, that’s when he hears footsteps coming down the stairs. He snatches his hand away so fast he almost knocks his coffee mug over, which makes his face flame with embarrassment, especially when Cas, the little shit, won’t wipe the smug smile off of his stupid, handsome face. 

“I’m not interrupting anything, am I?” Eileen asks as she crosses the living room. “Because I’d be more than happy to go back upstairs if you wanna pick up where you left off.”

Dean turns to face her even though his face is still burning so she can see his lips. “Haven’t you already done enough?”

She grins, letting him know just how unapologetic she is. “Not even close.”

Sam joins them then, and Dean takes the opportunity to slip away for a shower of his own. The day passes by much too quickly. Between getting the turkey ready for the oven, preparing all of the sides, and taking his turns in the Mario Trilogy Tournament, it hardly feels like he has any time with Sam at all. Thankfully, they all linger over dinner and dessert. Sam and Eileen brought wine that pairs with the turkey so well the four of them polish off three full bottles, and without the distraction of cooking or playing games, he feels like he finally gets a chance to really catch up with the people he loves most.

“When’re you moving back, Sammy?”

“You know we want to,” Sam tells him. “But until we find jobs here that pay as well as New York, we can’t.”

“We’re always looking though,” Eileen assures him. “We want to come back as much as you want us to be back.”

The four of them unwind in front of the TV watching all of the _Friends_ Thanksgiving episodes (it’s as close to Easter as they can find) before bed. Instead of using a chair from the kitchen table this time, Cas curls up on the floor by his feet, eventually winding up in the vee of Dean’s legs with his head on his thigh. Sam and Eileen shoot him encouraging smiles, and he’s too warm from wine and having his family surrounding him to fight the urge to comb his fingers through Cas’s thick hair. 

Cas melts against him, he sees Eileen lay her head on Sam’s shoulder in his peripheral vision and watches as Sam kisses the top of her head, and he’s officially the happiest he’s ever been.

It’s late when they all pry themselves off of the couch and split up into bedrooms, but even though he’s exhausted from so much cooking and all of the carbs he inhaled in the process, the warmth he felt on the couch doesn’t fade at all as he and Cas share his bathroom to brush their teeth together for the first time.

For what must be the hundredth time today, he tells himself he’s being ridiculous to feel so much about such a small, inconsequential act, but even his internal dialogue about acting like a teenage girl still doesn’t manage to wipe the smile off of his face. When Cas joins him in bed after his turn using the facilities, they move together wordlessly, Cas opening his arms and Dean going into them easily. 

“I’ve been looking forward to this all day,” Cas says quietly.

Because that’s way too close to his own secret thoughts, he makes a joke. “You just want me for my mattress.”

“Way to ruin the moment.” Dean laughs quietly, then snuggles in even closer. “I had a really good day.”

“Me, too,” Dean replies. 

“At one point I was sure I’d never be able to enjoy a holiday again,” Cas tells him. “I still thought about her a lot today, about what it might be like if she was here with us all, too, but it didn’t make me sad so much as just... wistful.”

“Hard to imagine having a baby here on top of everything else that went on,” Dean comments, hoping he doesn’t say the wrong thing.

“She would be a toddler by now,” Cas reminds him. “Though I don’t think that would be much better with how much they tend to get into things.”

Because this is something Dean’s wondered before and it seems like now’s as good as a time as any to bring it up, he asks, “Did you always want kids?”  
  
“No,” Cas says quickly. “And there’s a lot of guilt tangled up in that, too. Maybe if I had wanted her more, maybe she wouldn’t have...”

“I don’t think it works like that,” Dean assures him. 

“I don’t think so either, but I still think about it sometimes.”

“Do you ever think about having more kids?”

Cas inhales and exhales slowly. “I don’t think I can.” His arms tighten around Dean, like he’s trying to make sure he doesn’t go anywhere. “Do you... is that... is that something you want?”

“I thought I might, back in the day. But I’m 35 now, and I’m not getting any younger, you know? I don’t know if I could take all of the middle-of-the-night wake ups or fighting with a teenager when I’m fifty.”

“So you’d be okay with no kids, you think?”

Dean nods. “I figure Sam and Eileen will pop out a couple, and I can do all the fun shit with their kids and then hand them back before they keep me up all hours of the night.”

He can hear the smile in Cas’s voice when he says, “You would be a terrific uncle.”

“So would you.”

The words escape him before he realizes how that might have sounded, but thankfully Cas responds before he has time to freak out about it. “I like that idea.” Dean doesn’t know what to say to that, so he just lies quietly in Cas’s arms, matching his breathing to Cas’s until their chests are rising and falling in sync. “Dean?”

Dean tilts his head up to look Cas in the face. “Yeah?”

Cas cups his jaw with his palm, and Dean’s breath hitches when his thumb brushes over his bottom lip. There’s a silent question in Cas’s eyes that he can’t possibly make himself refuse, and so when Cas leans in the tiniest little bit, Dean closes his eyes in permission. An excruciatingly long second later, Cas’s plush lips touch his in a kiss so soft, so gentle, so incredibly tender that his whole chest aches with it. He presses his lips back against Cas’s, opening his mouth the tiniest little bit so their mouths line up just right, and the pressure of Cas’s palm on his face holds him in place for a handful of the sweetest seconds Dean’s ever experienced. Unbelievable warmth rises from his belly to fill his chest, and he knows he makes a pathetic little sound against Cas’s lips because of it before they break apart, but this simple kiss is hands-down the best one he’s ever had and he couldn’t hold it in even if he tried.

They’re both breathing much harder than a kiss without any heat behind it warrants when their lips part, and he really hopes he isn’t projecting when he sees the staggering depth of emotion in Cas’s eyes as he looks down at him, because _son of a bitch_ does he want Cas to feel the same way about him as he feels about Cas.

“Dean, I-I—” Cas presses his lips together to stop whatever he was going to say, then opens his mouth and closes it once more before his hand drops from Dean’s face and his arms wrap around him again. Dean lets his head fall back on Cas’s chest, hearing the way his heart is beating just as fast and as hard as his own. His head is spinning, trying not to wonder too hard about what Cas almost said when he feels a kiss to the top of his head. It makes him think about how Sam did the same thing to Eileen earlier—to his wife, to the person he shares his life with—and he feels hope fill him like air in a balloon. 

“Sleep well, Dean.”

 _Oh._ Cas’s rough voice is so fucking soft, damn near bursting with affection, and it makes Dean’s words come out sounding the exact same way. “‘Night, Cas.”

He falls asleep that night wondering if he’s insane for thinking it feels like they just exchanged _I love you’s_ for the first time.


	5. Chapter 5

He’s not surprised to wake up alone this time, and he isn’t nearly as nervous walking down the stairs in his pajamas, either. He knows without question that something shifted between him and Cas last night, but he also has faith that they’ll work it out. He’s only got a few hours before Sam and Eileen take off again for who knows how long, though, so other than making sure to give Cas’s lower back a lingering touch on the way to the coffee maker, he puts all of that out of his mind for the time being.

It’s proof of just how much he loves his brother (and the power of combined puppy dog eyes from Sam, Eileen, _and_ Cas, the dirty traitor) that he agrees to a walk down at Wissahickon Valley Park. Sam and Eileen got engaged there on a hike (the nerds), so he knows it’s special to them and that they probably miss it. They all cram into the Impala with Sam riding shotgun and Cas and Eileen in the back, and then Sam and Eileen lead the way once they get there and he and Cas follow behind them.

Cas bumps his shoulder into Dean’s and whispers, “It’s really beautiful out here now that I’m not searching for somewhere to sleep.”

His heart feels split wide open at the idea of a homeless Cas sleeping out here, but he pushes that down to say, “I thought you said you weren’t an outdoorsy kinda guy? Sure didn’t take much to have you joining evil forces with those two to get me out here.”

“I really just wanted an excuse to do this,” Cas says, taking his hand and sliding their fingers together.

Dean rolls his eyes a little, mostly for show, but judging by the way Cas smiles nice and wide, he knows Dean’s not really complaining. “Coulda held hands on the couch, you know.”

He sees Eileen look over her shoulder and the exact second she notices they’re holding hands is marked by the way she punches Sam on the shoulder and says, “Told ya! I win!”

Sam frowns, then follows her gaze behind him, also locking in on the sight of the two of them holding hands. “Hang on a second! Are you two together?” Dean and Cas exchange a look that says neither of them have no idea how to answer that question, and Sam sputters. “It’s not a trick question! Yes or no?”

“We’re open to the idea of being together,” Dean settles on.

“But you’re not together yet?” Eileen presses.

“No,” Dean confirms, squeezing Cas’s hand to make sure that doesn’t hurt his feelings at all.

“But you’re holding hands!” Sam exclaims, gesturing to where their hands hang between them.

“Oh my god,” Dean says, faking indignity. “Cas, you can’t hold my hand without making it Facebook official first! What kind of girl do you think I am?”

Cas and Eileen both laugh, but Sam only scowls. “Fine, whatever. They’re not together, and I’ll do the stupid laundry for a month,” he complains to Eileen.

“I told you, I’m never wrong!” Eileen says happily. Then, looking over her shoulder again, she adds, “And for the record Cas, he totally _is_ that kind of guy.”

Considering Cas knows exactly how easy it was to get Dean on his back, Dean can’t exactly blame him when all Cas can do is smile knowingly. He does have to look away though, because a cocky smile on Cas makes him look like sex on legs and the last thing Dean needs is to kiss the smile right off of his face the way he wants to. 

Thankfully, the rest of the walk is uneventful. He’s not surprised when Sam and Eileen lead them to the place that Sam proposed, and even though he’s heard the story a dozen times by now, he still laughs when Eileen talks about how Sam was so nervous that his hands were shaking badly enough that she could barely understand what he was signing, and if it wasn’t for the sudden appearance of a ring, she isn’t totally sure she would have gotten it at all. 

He wasn’t there when it happened, but Sam and Eileen called him immediately afterwards, and the excitement in their voices is a really good memory for him. He feels nice and warm listening to them talk about it again now, and when he has the urge to tuck Cas up against him, he wraps his arm around him and goes for it. He ignores the split second of silence from Sam while it happens, choosing to concentrate instead on how easily he and Cas fit together. Then when his hand drops to Castiel’s hip, his attention is pulled to how Cas has undeniably filled out since the last time he saw him naked. That’s not a great thought to linger on in front of his brother, but he can tell just by the casual touch that Cas’s hip bone isn’t as prominent as it was the last time they were together, and he has to fight to keep his mind out of the gutter when all it wants to do is picture how different Cas might look naked now.

They have turkey sandwiches made from leftovers once they get home, and then comes the worst part of every trip: having to say goodbye. It’s emotional for all three of them every single time, and today is no different. He slaps his brother’s back a dozen times between promises of visiting again soon and video calls every day before he can finally pry himself away without tears in his eyes, and then he wraps himself around Eileen’s tiny frame.

She whispers that she’ll take good care of Sam and not to worry the same way she does every time, and he nods as he chokes back more tears until they finally break apart, too. He watches Sam and Cas and then Eileen and Cas hug out their goodbyes, and then he stands on the front step and watches as they back out of the driveway and disappear down the road.

For the first time ever, though, he’s not alone when it happens.

This time, Cas is there to wrap his arm around him and guide him into the house, and Cas is there with open arms to fall into once they’re inside and nobody can see them. Cas is there to stroke his back and murmur that it’s okay to be sad, but that it won’t be so long between visits this time, and that he’s going to put in for the time off to join him in New York at the end of May for the next long weekend.

Cas is there to urge his face off of his shoulder, to wipe the tears off of his face, and to tell him so earnestly, “You’re not left behind all alone this time. I’m here, and I’m going to stay for as long as you want me to.” 

Cas kisses his forehead, then his left cheek and his right cheek. Cas’s eyes drop to Dean’s lips and the sexual tension in the air begins to build between them. Cas hesitates instead of backing away for just a second too long for Dean to be able to resist him, and the next thing he knows, their lips are crashing together. 

It’s messy and urgent, and Dean moans at the very first probing swipe of Castiel’s tongue along the seam of his lips. He opens for him eagerly, feeling everything else fade away into nothingness the moment Cas’s tongue slides against his. Cas dominates the kiss, setting the pace, the pressure, and the longevity of each liplock before he pulls away to start all over again, and Dean surrenders control without a thought. Cas keeps his hands firmly on Dean’s face, tilting his head exactly the way he wants it and maintaining a steady pressure so Dean can’t pull too far away, prompting Dean to escalate things by running his hands up underneath Cas’s shirt to feel his bare skin beneath his palms.

Cas makes a surprised sound of pleasure against his lips and steers him back until he collides with the wall behind him. Their teeth clack together and Cas goes to pull away, to slow down probably, but Dean drops his hands to Cas’s hips and tugs him in instead, tilting his hips out so that Cas can feel the way he’s starting to plump up in his jeans. It works to his advantage, because Cas only crowds him more forcefully against the wall, grinding their groins together with sinful little rolls of his hips that make his eyes cross from how damn good it feels. He doesn’t stop until they’re both hard as a rock and panting into each other’s mouths between kisses so dirty Dean doesn’t even care that he’s about to come in his pants for the first time in more than a fucking decade.

It’s only when Cas’s lips travel down his neck and start sucking a mark into the junction of his shoulder that he remembers this isn’t the way they were meant to do things.

“Dating,” Dean pants. “You s-said—said we’d date first.”

Cas’s mouth makes a slick-sounding _pop_ when he breaks the seal on Dean’s neck, and Dean’s weak enough in the knees that he’s pretty damn sure he’d be sliding right down the wall if Cas wasn’t holding him up when he gets his first glimpse of Cas all flushed with arousal, his lips swollen from kissing and shiny with spit. He looks so fucking hot Dean’s hips cant forwards on instinct, drawing a garbled sound from Cas and another dirty grind of his hips in response before he remembers to slow down again. 

“Shit, sorry,” Cas says, swallowing hard and taking a step back. 

Dean’s hard as a rock and he can see the bulge in Cas’s pants now that there’s space between them, and he has to bite down on his own bottom lip so he doesn’t do something stupid like beg Cas not to stop or drop to his knees right here and now to swallow down Cas’s dick all in one go.

Arousal strikes like lightning at the very thought, and without any conscious decision-making on his part, he asks, “Do you care?”

“I’m not going to care about you any less if we fuck now and date later, if that’s what you’re asking me,” Cas says bluntly.

“Works for me.”

He grabs Cas by the front of his shirt and hauls him back in, capturing his mouth in a heated kiss that has Cas making a useless little, “Mmph,” against his lips. He gets his hands on Cas’s hips and spins them around until it’s Cas who has his back to the wall, and though they almost trip over shoes on the mat next to the door, they both kick them away blindly while their lips remain sealed together. Only then does Dean really go for it and palm over Cas’s dick. Cas is so fucking hard and just as long as he remembers, and he can only make himself stay on top of his clothes for about ten seconds before he loses the internal battle with himself and begins the war with the button and the fly on Cas’s jeans to free Cas’s heavy cock from its confines.

Cas moans the second his cock hits the air, and Dean lowers his gaze, taking in the sheer length of him and how he’s already flushed red and leaking at the tip. “So fuckin’ hard for me, aren’t you, Cas?”

“Fuck yes,” Cas agrees without even a hint of shame. “Don’t stop now.”

“I’m not gonna stop, sweetheart. I’m gonna swallow your cock.” Cas’s lips part in surprise, but he makes a low, rumbling sound of approval in his throat as Dean drops to his knees in front of him. “Got a real pretty dick, Cas,” Dean says as he runs a loose fist from base to tip, squeezing a little until a new bead of precum pearls at the tip. “You clean?”

Cas is breathing so hard he’s afraid Cas is going to drop dead of a heart attack before Dean can get his dick in his mouth. “Probably?” Cas answers, somewhat hysterically.

Dean shrugs. “Good enough for me.”

And then he swipes the flat of his tongue along the tip of Castiel’s cock, sucking down the bead of precum and swirling his tongue around the head to collect any he might have missed from before. It’s been a while since he’s done this, and although he hadn’t forgotten how much he enjoys it, he did forget parts of why he does. 

The first one comes back to him when Cas starts breathlessly cursing like a sailor. “Jesus fucking Christ, Dean. Oh _fuck me._ Fuck. _Fuck,_ that feels good.”

He loves reducing a big, strong man into nothing more than an incoherent constant stream of curse words. He loves the stretch of his jaw as he fits his mouth around Cas’s nice, girthy cock, and how his lips strain at the corners. He loves the sensation of steel encased by soft skin filling his mouth as he sinks down little by little. He loves the hitch in Cas’s breathing when Dean flicks his eyes up through his eyelashes for the first time to watch Cas with blue eyes trained on him as his cock disappears between his lips one inch at a time. He loves watching Cas’s gorgeous blue eyes all but roll up into his head when Dean opens his throat and lets every goddamn inch of his monster cock slide into the tunnel of his throat.

He loves that first half-aborted thrust when Cas starts to lose control and reins it in a second too late, trying to be gentlemen. 

“Sorry, sorry, sorry,” Cas murmurs between harsh, panting breaths. 

He loves having his hands free to indulge himself with finally getting them on the full bubble butt he’s been trying not to check out for months. He loves the supple give to Cas’s flesh here as he gropes and squeezes him, loves thinking about turning him around and burying his face between his ass cheeks, but he loves using the grip he has on Cas’s ass to pull him in by it even more. And fuck, does he love the reverent glint in Cas’s big blue eyes when he realizes exactly what Dean is asking for. 

Cas fucking delivers, too. He fists his fingers in the long hair at the top of Dean’s head and holds him in place while he pulls out and thrusts back into the slick cavern of his mouth, nice and slow at first. Just testing the waters.

“Is that what you want?” Cas asks him. 

Dean hums with his mouth full of cock, carefully breathing through his nose while Cas starts rocking shallowly in and out of Dean’s mouth. He can feel the heavy drag of Cas’s cock along his tongue and tries to curl his tongue up against it, then laps at the tip like a dog when Cas pulls out all the way. 

Cas strokes himself right in front of Dean’s face, making Dean palm over his own cock when he sees a string of saliva and precum drooling from the tip. He fumbles with his fly, gets his dick out, and dives forward once he has a hand wrapped around himself. He seals his mouth around the crown of Cas’s cock, flicking his tongue against the slit and swallowing down every little drop of fluid he eases from it. A strong burst of precum hits his taste buds, so bitter and undeniably masculine that he genuinely moans as he hollows his cheeks, sucking with everything he has to draw out every ounce of that specific flavor that’s so uniquely Cas. 

“Oh fuck,” Cas curses. “Your fucking mouth, Dean.”

Dean hums his agreement as arousal rushes through him, and when Cas tightens his grip in his hair and urges him to start bobbing his head, Dean is more than happy to match the tempo of his own hand flying over his cock to each bob of his head. Cas likes it fast, and he starts a rhythm of a dozen quick little shallow thrusts that has the head of his cock nudging against Dean’s soft palate. Again, Dean curls the flat of his tongue along his length and maintains steady suction as Cas fucks his face just the way he likes it. 

Cas’s voice is low and full of grit when he speaks again. “Let’s see how much your pretty lips can take.” 

Then his free hand wraps around the back of Dean’s head to hold him in place, and he slides all the way home, his jaw coming completely unhinged when Dean’s nose hits his pubic hair. 

“Motherfucker,” Cas says hoarsely. “You’re _so good,_ Dean. Feels—feels _incredible.”_

Pride rushes through him from the combination of the compliment and seeing Cas really let go. Knowing Cas feels good for once and is so obviously lost in the throes of passion just from Dean’s mouth is as gratifying as anything he’s ever done. He’s more than happy to hold his breath while Cas grinds into the back of his throat for a few seconds, pushing his cock as deep into Dean’s throat as it can possibly go. Though it seems like the last thing Cas wants to do, when Dean’s eyes widen as he starts to run out of breath, Cas pulls out quickly. 

“You okay?” Cas checks. 

Dean takes a deep, steadying breath as he nods his head, licks his lips, and dives right back in. He releases his own angry cock in favor of pinning Cas back to the wall by his hips and swallowing him down to the root again. Cas lets out a hoarse cry as Dean goes to town, bobbing his head as fast as he can and flicking over the head and against the crown with his tongue before taking him into the hilt and sucking _hard_ all the way back to the tip. 

“Oh fucking _Christ,_ Dean.” Cas rests his hands on his head, letting Dean set the pace now but stroking down the back of his neck with those big fingers of his. It’s an intimate touch that warms his insides, reminding him that even though this is quick and dirty, they care about each other outside of this. He redoubles his efforts, and he knows Cas has gotta be close when he starts muttering snippets of things that sound like, “Oh fuck. So good. So, so good. Fuck, Dean. Dean, _ugh!_ Mmmm. Oh!” Dean hums again, enjoying the litany of curses he’s getting out of him. “Oh yeah. Yeah, just like that— _Dean!_ Dean, I’m, I’m—”

Even if Cas can’t seem to get the words out in time, Dean knows exactly what’s about to happen, because he can feel Cas’s cock swell impossibly bigger in his mouth a split second before Cas legitimately shouts, “ _DEAN!”_

Cas pulses, spilling into his mouth, all hot and bitter and so much so fucking fast that Dean chokes for the first time tonight as he struggles to drink it all down. There’s saliva and cum spilling from the edges of his lips down over his chin, and still, he sucks with abandon. He swallows down spit and cum, bobbing his head gently over and over until Cas finally pulls away with an exasperated, “Holy fuck, Dean.”

Dean sits back on his heels and wipes his mouth on the back of his hand, then shoots a cocky smile up at Cas. “You gonna return the favor, or do you wanna watch and owe me one?” Dean asks, looking down at where his dick is still achingly hard and hanging out of his pants. 

Cas eyes Dean’s cock with interest, but he takes his sweet time pulling up his boxers and tucking himself into them, radiating such big _you can wait_ _until I’m ready_ energy that Dean keeps his hands on his thighs without even considering the alternative. 

“First I’m going to help you up so that you can walk tomorrow,” Cas says, reaching for his hands so that he can get to his feet. And yeah, Cas has a hell of a point because he can hardly feel anything from the knee down already, and he winces when he tries to straighten out. “Then I’m going to tell you that was easily the best blow job I’ve _ever_ had in my life, and promise you anything and everything within my power to secure myself another one in the not so distant future,” Cas says with an adorable little sideways grin. 

Dean smirks, pleased with himself and Cas’s glowing review, when Cas suddenly cups Dean’s face with his hands. His gaze is all soft the way it so frequently is when he’s looking at Dean, and Dean feels something come loose in his chest. Cas brushes his thumb over Dean’s bottom lip before he leans in and kisses him gently, once, twice, three times. “And then,” he says, but his lips are still brushing against Dean’s like he can’t quite tear himself away. “I’m going to need you to lose some clothes, because I’ve been thinking about you naked since the moment I met you and I don’t want to wait another second if I don’t have to.”

He pushes Dean’s flannel off over his shoulders at the same time he licks into Dean’s mouth, making a muffled sound against his lips when Dean assumes he can taste himself on his tongue. Their lips never part all through Cas pulling Dean’s pants and boxers down, and once Dean steps out of them, those big hands fit to his ass and begin kneading his flesh as Cas walks him backwards. 

He has no idea where they’re going, but with Cas’s hands on his ass and his tongue in his mouth, he really doesn’t care, so he goes with it until he finds himself bumping into the kitchen table. 

“Up,” Cas commands him, and he only hesitates a second before he hops onto the table. The surface is cold on his ass, but he doesn’t have time to try to get used to it before Cas grabs the hem of Dean’s t-shirt and pulls it up and over his head. 

Cas’s hands come down onto his shoulders, running along them and down his arms as he steps into the vee of Dean’s open legs. “You’re absolutely gorgeous, Dean.” He has no idea how he’s still able to blush when he feels like every ounce of his blood is filling his cock, but he feels his face heat up anyway. “I’m dying to learn every inch of you, inside and out, until I know exactly how to touch you to make you beg for it.” Dean swallows down the sudden lump in his throat, thinking again that Cas has the _perfect_ voice for dirty talk. “But you’ve been so good to me, and you’ve waited long enough, haven’t you?”

“Yeah,” Dean answers, his voice barely more than a hoarse whisper. 

Cas pulls a chair up to the table in front of Dean like he’s about to sit down for a meal, and tugs Dean forward until his ass is on the edge of the table and his legs are bracketing Cas’s hips with his feet on Cas’s chair. 

“You have no idea how many times I’ve thought about this,” Cas tells him, and then he leans in with no further preamble and sucks Dean’s cockhead into his mouth. 

It’s been a really long fucking time since he’s had his dick in anybody’s mouth, and the very first hint of wet, warm suction damn near pushes him over the edge. It feels _unbelievable,_ but all he can see is a dark mop of messy hair, slowly sinking down as Cas takes his cock further into his mouth. Cas doesn’t seem able to take more than half of his length, but he makes up for it with a filthy fucking tongue that feels miles long and an _insane_ amount of suction that pulls strangled, surprised little sounds from his lips. 

Wanting a better view than just the top of Cas’s head, he leans back on his elbows to get a good look. Seeing Cas’s pink lips wrapped tightly around his cock as he bobs his head along his shaft is one of the most erotic things he’s ever seen, and when Cas’s eyes flick up to catch his, Dean can feel desire coiling tightly in his stomach like a spring. 

Cas applies himself to his task with the same single-minded, bold determination he does everything with, and Dean goes with it when Cas urges his legs up and over Cas’s shoulders so Cas can get even closer. Cas gets a hand on him, picking up the slack to stroke what his mouth can’t take, and the dual sensations has Dean tilting his head back with a low moan. Cas alternates between circling the crown with his tongue and pointing the tip to flick it against his frenulum, and combined with the one hand stroking him and the other joining the party to rub and tug on his balls, it’s an embarrassingly short few minutes before Dean’s curling his toes in a desperate bid to hang on another second as ecstasy tightens in his core.

“Cas—Cas I’m gonna come.” 

Cas moans his permission, and the slight vibration stimulating his cock is all it takes to have him emptying his load between those pretty pink lips. Heat licks like flames over his skin. His fingers grip the edge of the table for purchase as a burning pleasure consumes him, and his thighs clamp around Cas’s head as he grunts out a cacophony of unintelligible sounds while Cas continues to suck like his life depends on it.

He’s collapsed back bonelessly onto the table and his lungs are burning with the need for air by the time he’s spent, but still, Cas doesn’t stop. He lessens the suction so that he’s merely cradling Dean’s cock in his mouth, holding him there in all of the wet, hot glory of his mouth even when Dean’s almost entirely soft and over sensitive with it. His big hands caress Dean’s thighs, stomach, and balls, and Dean’s moaning himself hoarse from how fucking good it all feels. He’s never had anybody pay this kind of attention to him _after_ an orgasm before, and while his body twitches and shakes with overstimulation, his mind is floating in euphoria. Cas’s prolonged touch extends the high from his orgasm for so long that he’s riding the edge between pleasure and pain when it eventually comes to a stop.

If he had to guess (which he hesitates to do since he’s sure his brain is as addled as it’s ever been), he’d say it’s a solid ten minutes _after_ he’s come that Cas slurps one final time around him and lets his flaccid penis fall from his mouth. He lifts his head, giving Dean an unobstructed view of how his lips are swollen and shiny with spit, and even though he can’t _possibly_ move to go in for the kiss he so desperately craves, a quiet whine seems to be enough to convey that to Cas because he stands and leans over him to press his lips tenderly to Dean’s.

He whines a second time, overwhelmed with how unbelievably _sated_ he feels and how fucking much he loves the man hovering over him, and his hands decide to cooperate long enough to run his fingers through Cas’s sweaty hair. Dean opens his mouth in invitation, melting impossibly further into the table when Cas sweeps his tongue inside and kisses him to within an inch of his life. It’s undeniably hot, but with the way his hands are combing through Cas’s hair and Cas is brushing the backs of his fingers down Dean’s cheek, it’s startlingly clear that it’s also much, much more than that. 

When their lips finally part, Dean’s eyes open to a sea of blue and heavily-lidded eyes that he knows without knowing how that he will never _ever_ get tired of looking into. And when whatever his face is doing makes Cas break into an adorable little smile, all of the feelings he wasn’t thinking about while they were getting off come rising back to the surface so quickly he’s actually surprised they don’t explode right out of his throat and into the space between them.

“That was unexpected,” Cas says, finally breaking the silence between them.

Dean huffs a laugh as Cas tugs him back to sitting up. He loops his arms around Cas’s neck and leans in for another quick kiss. “Any life-shattering confessions you wanna ruin the mood with this time around?” he teases. 

“Nothing comes to mind, but that could be because you sucked my brain out.”

“You’re welcome,” Dean deadpans. 

Cas smiles adoringly. “Now that we’ve officially crossed the line between friends and more, how do you feel about a post-sex cuddle on the couch?”

“I’m in as soon as we find my boxers.”

Cas chuckles, but turns around to fish them off of the floor to hand them to Dean. His ass sticks to the table when he hops off, and he frowns at the ass print it leaves behind. “We have _got_ to clean that.”

“I say we eat at the other end and leave it as a nice little momento,” Cas jokes. 

Dean steps into his boxers, laughing at the very idea. “You know, I don’t think I’ve ever fooled around on a kitchen table before. Kitchen counter, yeah, but not the table.”

“Well I’m happy to be of service then,” Cas replies. They walk through to the living room together, Cas fully dressed and Dean in just his boxers. “Let me know if you have anywhere else you want to cross off the list.”

Cas sits down at the far end of the couch with his back to the armrest and his feet laid out along the couch, then spreads his legs and pats his thighs, letting Dean know he wants him to lie down between them. 

“I don’t know, might be nice to actually make it to the bed for once,” Dean comments as he gets himself situated. 

“We can go there now if you want.” 

He chuckles again, snuggling into Cas’s chest and his soft t-shirt when he realizes Cas is still fully dressed. “Why am I the only one with no clothes on?” 

“Believe me, you don’t want to see me naked.”

Dean snorts a laugh. “I’m gonna have to disagree pretty hard on that.” 

There’s a pause before Cas replies, and this time his voice is more serious. “My body isn’t much to look at right now.”

“You’re kidding me with that, right?” Dean checks. He pops his head up and gets an eyeful of Cas looking somewhere between sad and embarrassed. “Cas, I don’t care what your body looks like. It’s the dude attached to it that won me over.”

“While I appreciate that, my point still stands. I’m hardly more than skin and bones.” 

“Nuh-uh. I’ve seen you as skin and bones, and believe _me,_ you were hot as fuck back then and you’re even hotter now. Body included.” 

Cas wraps his arms around him more securely and urges his head back down to Cas’s chest. “Clothes can be deceiving.”

“Okay, well, not to be a creeper or whatever but I accidentally saw you naked in your bedroom once a couple of months ago and it left a lasting impression, so.” 

“You saw me naked?” Cas repeats. “When I was changing or something?”

“Or something,” Dean says, failing at keeping the smile out of his voice. 

“Dean.”

“I swear I didn’t hang around and watch or anything, but I heard noises coming from your room one night and went to check if you were okay. You _were_ okay, you were just... cleaning the pipes.”

“Cleaning the—” Cas stops mid-sentence as it sinks in exactly what Dean’s saying, then exclaims, “You saw me jerking off?”

“Only for a split second,” Dean says again. “Barely saw any of the good stuff, but I did get a decent look at your body.” 

“Why didn’t you tell me!?”

Dean huffs a laugh. “Yeah, _that’s_ a conversation I wanted to have with the guy I already had a chubby for.”

“You can be incredibly crass.”

Dean shrugs, but doesn’t even try to hide his amusement. “Sorry.”

“Yeah, I can feel the apology rolling off of you in waves,” Cas says sarcastically.

“The point is, I’ve seen you naked, and even though you were a little thin, you were still hot as fuck, okay? But I’m more than willing to keep fattening you up until you look however you wanna look, and when you get there, I’m still gonna think you’re just as hot ‘cause you’re you.”

“I used to run,” Cas tells him. “To keep in shape. My upper body was never really muscular, but I was fit.”

“Probably explains the killer ass.” When Cas only hums like he’s pleased by that comment, Dean adds, “You should get back into it. Running. If you want to.”

“Honestly, I don’t know how I feel about running the streets I used to live on.”

He really has gone soft for Cas, because like earlier in the park, just hearing Cas talk about living on the streets makes his heart ache. He presses a kiss to the middle of Cas’s chest over his t-shirt, feeling completely useless but hoping it’s at least a tiny comfort. 

Then he remembers. “There’s a treadmill in the basement. Used to be Sam’s, but he didn’t bring it with him when he moved. It’s a couple years old by now and it’ll probably be covered in dust, but we can haul it upstairs if you want. It’ll fit next to your bed.”

“You wouldn’t mind?”

“Not if it makes you happy.”

Cas kisses the top of his head and murmurs, “You are a very good man, Dean Winchester.”

That makes his insides warm, but he replies, “Thought you said I’m crass.”

“Just part of your charm,” Cas insists. 

“Does that mean you’re gonna let me see you naked now?” Dean jokes. 

“Maybe later. I’m still recovering from before.”

“That makes two of us. I don’t know if it’s because I’m so into you or what, but I’m pretty sure that was the best sex I’ve had in years.”

“So this isn’t just sex?”

Dean’s heart clenches nervously in his chest. “Not for me.”

“Not for me either. I know we talked about dating and taking things slow—” 

“And then didn’t.”

“And then didn’t,” Cas agrees. “So I guess I don’t really know where you want this to go now.”

“I’m still open to taking you out sometime,” Dean says. 

“No, I asked you first, so I get to take _you_ out,” Cas insists. 

Dean chuckles a little. “Alright, that works too.”

“And until then?” Cas asks. 

Dean sighs heavily as the reality of the situation comes back to him. “It’s still complicated. You’re still married.”

“Only technically. I talked to Sam about it this morning, and he said he’d do what he could to find Daphne, but also told me I don’t have to know where she is in order to file for divorce. It’s around four hundred dollars though, so until I know for sure if you want me to move out to prove to you I’m not only interested in you because you’ve been my knight in shining armor, I don’t want to spend the money I have saved for rent.” 

“I don’t want you to move out.” He wants to do the right thing and wait to be with Cas when Cas is no longer tied to his wife, but at the same time, it seems pretty clear that they’re not going to be able to do that. They’ve been walking the line of friendship and more this whole time, and after everything that’s happened this weekend he can’t imagine going back to anything less than what they’re already doing. “If you swear to me you’re as sure as you can possibly be that this thing between us isn’t just gratitude all mixed up as feelings or whatever—”

“It’s _not,”_ Cas says emphatically. 

_“And_ that you’ll tell me the second you realize that starts to change if it does—”

“It won’t.”

“Then yeah,” Dean finally admits, both to himself and to Cas. “I want you to stay for as long as you want to stay, and I wanna be _together_ together.” When saying that much doesn’t make him feel stupid or needy, he keeps going and gets (almost) everything off of his chest. “I want to introduce you as my partner instead of my roommate, and I want you to stay in my bed as often as you want to.”

“Dean,” Cas says happily, rubbing up and down his bare back. “I want that, too. I want all of that. I’ve—” He stops and waits for Dean to look up at him. “I feel like I’ve wanted that for _so,_ so long.”

Dean stretches his neck to meet Cas half way for a kiss. It’s just a gentle brush of four lips together that holds for several seconds, but it manages to communicate the depth of their feelings for one another that they both seem to be either too nervous or too frightened to say out loud right now. They’re both smiling when they pull apart, and for the rest of the night, every time they look at each other, they still have smiles on their faces. 


	6. Chapter 6

It’s not surprising that Dean and Cas get along as well as a couple as they did as roommates. They share Dean’s bed, they sit together too closely on the couch, text a few times during each work day, and keep splitting the housework like they always did before. The biggest change is when they get dressed up and go out to dinner to a steakhouse the first weekend after they officially got together. Dean lets Cas pay even though it drives him crazy, and in retaliation, he pays to take Cas to the movie theater the weekend after where they neck in the back row like a couple of teenagers. 

It’s fun and easy, and actually a lot like Cas said it would be: everything they already did together with sex added in. Well, everything _but_ actual penetrative sex, but it’s not like he’s complaining about at least an orgasm every other day for the first time in longer than he can remember. It’s hard not to notice that Cas keeps his shirt on every time, though. Neither of them say anything about it, but he does try to tell Cas how much he loves his body as often as he can without it being overkill to help him feel more comfortable in his skin. 

He considers talking to Eileen about how to bring it up to Cas, but she and Sam pick up this huge case that has them both so buried they barely speak at all for the longest two weeks of his life. By that time, he feels like he’s starting to make progress with Cas. Cas is starting to let him push his hands up under Cas’s shirt when they’re in bed, and Dean’s been lifting it up a little bit at a time. 

Tonight, he’s managed to get Cas’s shirt up past his navel while he’s been marking his hip bones with dark, purpling bruises that have Cas rolling his hips up into nothing.

Dean holds him down with a low chuckle and goes right back to working on a particularly dark mark on his left hip when Cas suddenly loses his patience, knocks Dean’s hands away, and flips him over onto his back so fluidly Dean’s cock is set to burst by the time he hits the mattress. 

“Jesus Christ,” he says, absolutely mindless with arousal. “Come’ere. Wanna feel you.” 

Cas growls as he smashes their lips together, and taking that as a hell yes, he reaches for the hem of Cas’s shirt and starts tugging it up. Cas’s fingers wrap around his wrists, stopping him with an iron grip, and their lips part as they both seem to realize they’ve come to an impasse. 

“Come on, Cas,” Dean groans. “I wanna feel _all_ of you.”

“I can’t,” Cas replies, sounding pained.

“Cas, babe,” Dean tries, purposely softening his voice and forgetting about his frustration for the time being. “I love your body the way it is. I love touching you and kissing you, and I want to be able to show you how much.” The stubborn set of Cas’s jaw is loosening, and he knows he’s actually starting to get through to him. “Let me show you how fucking perfect you are to me.” 

“Dean, I—I care about you and appreciate you so, so much. But I’m just not there yet. I’m closer, thanks to you, but I need a little bit more time. I’m sorry.”

By now, both of their erections have almost flagged completely, and for once in his life, he’s actually not in the mood to keep going. He guides Cas down onto his chest by his neck and kisses his forehead, then wraps his arms around his shoulders until Cas lies down on top of him. 

“You don’t have to be sorry. It’s your body, your choice and all that stuff. I’m the one who, uh, should be sorry. For pushing.” He kisses his slightly sweaty mop of hair, and forces the words out again. “I am sorry.”

“There’s nothing to apologize for. I understand that you’re frustrated. I’m sure you didn’t come into this relationship with me thinking it would be like this.”

“Hey, none of that,” he says quickly. “I wouldn’t trade you for anything, okay? Shirt off or not.”

“We haven’t even been able to shower together because of me,” Cas says sadly. 

“I don’t care about that.”

“Yeah? What about sex?”

Dean swallows hard. “What about it?”

“We haven’t fucked yet.”

“I noticed,” he says carefully. 

“I kept telling myself it’s because I wanted to wait for _that_ at least until I’m divorced,” Cas says. That’s news to him, but as out-of-nowhere as it feels to hear, it’s nice to actually have an explanation for why Cas hasn’t been trying to take things further, too. “But I don’t even know if that’s really it.”

He lets that sink in for a minute, not wanting to say something insensitive that’s only going to make it worse. “I’ve never pretended to be good at this whole talking about feelings stuff, so this is probably the pot calling the kettle black or whatever, but it would’ve been nice to know where your head was at.”

“I know. I should have told you I wanted to wait, I just didn’t know how to explain it. And I didn’t know what your reaction would be.” 

“I mean, I’d like to fuck.” It sounds a little crude, but Cas said it first and it’s a hell of a lot better than making this any more like a chick flick by saying something lame like ‘making love,’ so he goes with it. “But I’m not unhappy with what we’ve got going on. Not even close. Hell, this is the best sexual relationship I’ve ever had even without it. I just wish you would’ve told me what you were thinking so I knew where the boundaries were, you know.” 

“I... hate feeling like this,” Cas whispers. “I’m so happy with you, and I care about you and trust you, and logically I know you would never think any differently of me because of what I look like. But I—I get this, this pit in my stomach every time I’m about to take my shirt off and I can’t get past it.”

“Cas,” Dean says sadly. “I don’t want you to ever feel anything but safe and cared for when we’re in bed. _Ever._ If you wanna have sex with your shirt on, it might be a little different but I’m sure we can make it work. And if you want to wait until you’re divorced or until you feel comfortable taking it off, we can do that, too. You just gotta tell me what you want, okay?”

“Why are you so good to me?” Cas asks, sounding legitimately stumped. “You could have anybody. Somebody normal without all of these hang ups—”

“Yeah, but then it wouldn’t be you,” Dean interrupts him. “And I haven’t wanted anybody _but_ you since we met.” 

“That long ago?”

“Yep. I was waiting for you before I even knew that’s what I was doing,” Dean says, realizing it for the first time as the words come out of his mouth. The thought makes him warm inside, so he gives into his mushy side to plant another kiss in Cas’s messy hair. “Not about to give up on you now.”

“Thank you,” Cas breathes. 

He would swear that he can feel some of the tension ease out of Cas’s shoulders after that, and it has him wondering what else he could do to help Cas get past this. He's never asked before because as adamant as Cas has been about keeping his shirt on, he also hasn’t really brought it up like he did today. He doesn’t want to push Cas, but it seems like if there’s ever going to be a good time to talk about this whole thing, this is probably it.

“Is there anything I can do to help make this easier on you?” Dean asks. “To help with that bad feeling you get?”

Cas is quiet for a few seconds, and Dean hopes his silence means that he’s thinking about it and not that he’s mad. “I don’t know,” Cas answers. “If I think of anything, I’ll let you know, though.”

Because he seems open to talking about it, he pushes a little harder. “Is it the idea of me seeing you or touching you that freaks you out the most?”

There is no hesitancy at all before Cas replies, “Seeing me.”

“I could keep my eyes closed. Turn my back. Or you could blindfold me.”

Cas pops his head up for that. “Seriously?”

Dean folds his mouth into a shrug. “I’ve never done it, but I’m not against it. Especially not if it’ll help.”

“It’s not a bad idea. Let me think about it?”

“‘Course.”

They don’t end up getting the orgasms they were so clearly leading up to earlier that night, but they stay up talking for later than they usually do. Cas tells him all about how he’s been thinking about wanting to have a clean break from his old life before taking things to the next level with him. He explains that he doesn’t want to put too much pressure on something so new, but that he really thinks the two of them have something special, and he doesn’t want to screw it up by not taking it seriously. 

Although Dean never talks about shit like this with people he’s dating, he admits he thinks this thing between them could be pretty great, too. He tells Cas how easy it is to be with him and how right it feels, and when Cas just keeps looking at him like he hung the fucking moon, he thinks that he probably would have told Cas that he’s in love with him if it wasn’t for Cas’s earlier comment about wanting a clean break between him and Daphne before getting any more serious. 

Thankfully, the solution to that problem comes two weeks later, the day after Sam and Eileen wrap up the case they were working on. It’s good timing, too, because they’re not far out from their scheduled visit to NYC for the May long weekend, and Dean was starting to worry about Sam and Eileen cancelling on them. Cas’s phone rings on a Thursday evening. Usually that means he’s getting a phone call from the Gas N Sip from somebody who needs help with something, but this time, Dean can see it says SAM on his screen.

“That’s weird,” Cas says. He puts it on speaker and says, “Hello?”

“Hey, Cas. It’s Sam. Hope you don’t mind that I called you.”

“Of course not. How are you doing?”

“Still resting up from how busy we’ve been with that case, but I’m starting to see straight again, so that’s encouraging,” Sam jokes. Cas laughs a little while Dean frowns and starts worrying about his brother, but Sam continues, “The reason I’m calling is because I finally had time to look over the papers you emailed me about the divorce.”

“Oh! That’s great.”

“There’s just a couple things you need to change to streamline the process. Do you have a pen handy?’

Dean passes him a pen and notebook he keeps by the landline, and Cas takes down the notes of the things he needs to change. It ends up being just a couple of missed boxes and rewording a few things, and then Sam says, “You can mail those in with a money order if you want, or the courthouse is open until eight if you wanted to get that done tonight. I know you’ve been anxious about it and I feel really bad that I’ve been holding you up.”

“Sam, you’re saving me _hundreds_ of dollars. You have nothing to apologize for. Thank you again, so, so much.”

“Happy to help. If you need anything else, let me know.”

“I will,” Cas says. “Thanks again.”

“No problem. Good luck!”

Cas ends the call and looks over at Dean hopefully. “Do you wanna go now?” Dean asks him.

“Would you mind driving? The buses are all fucked up after six.”

“That’s why I asked. Let’s go get you divorced.”

Cas smiles nice and big, and less than 15 minutes later, Dean’s pulling into the courthouse parking lot. “Lots of free spots, so that’s encouraging,” Dean says as he parks. “Probably won’t be much of a line.”

“They close in a half hour, so let’s hope so. Come on.”

“You want me to go in with you?” Dean checks. 

“If you wouldn’t mind?”

“You got it.” Cas grabs for his hand as soon as they’re out of the car, and Dean wonders if he’s nervous or if he has any kind of second thoughts or sadness or regret over his marriage ending. “Is this weird for you?” he finally asks. 

“It’s kind of weird that the last time I was here I got a marriage licence,” Cas replies, but he has a little smile on his face. “But it probably speaks volumes that I’m more sure about the divorce than I was about the marriage.”

“There’s no rush on my end. If you want to wait—”

“I don’t. I have no doubts about this, Dean. My affections lie elsewhere now,” Cas says with a more genuine smile aimed in his direction. 

They walk inside and follow the signs to find the right place to go, and Cas walks up to a lady behind a glass window. He greets her and hands over the paperwork, and while Dean thought that would be it, she opens it up and starts going through it right there. Once she verifies there’s no obvious mistakes, she starts typing shit into the computer while Cas reaches for his wallet. 

“How much is it exactly?” he asks her. 

Dean lowers his voice but says, “If you don’t have enough, I can help you out.”

The lady looks between them and smiles. “It’s your lucky day. Your divorce has already been processed.”

Dean’s ears perk up, but Cas frowns. “I don’t understand.”

“Papers were filed in October, and when you were unreachable for 90 days following, the divorce was granted. You’ve been officially divorced since January 10, 2020. I can get you a copy of the decree for $41.58 if you’d like it.”

“I-I, yes. Yes, thank you.”

A few minutes later, Cas has paid and been handed a brown envelope, and he turns towards Dean with a look of pure shock on his face. They walk away from the window a little before they stop so Cas can pull out the divorce decree, and they both look down at it in wonder. 

Dean’s unsure what to say, so he waits for Cas to look up at him, which is when he sees the beginning of a smile on his face.

“Well, Castiel Novak,” he says, using Cas’s full name for the first time ever. “How does it feel to be a free man?”

“Incredible,” Cas breathes. “I’m still in shock, I think, but I’m relieved, too. I’m not married anymore. I only have ties to you.”

Dean feels his chest puff out with pride. “Now I can say you’re all mine,” he grins. 

“And always have been. You realize that this means from the start—even back for our first time on the couch when I told you afterwards—I thought I was married, but I wasn’t.” Then his smile falls. “We could have been together the whole time.”

“I think it worked out pretty damn well the way it did,” Dean points out. He leans in to give him a quick kiss, and then just to make him smile, he takes his hand and says, “Let’s get my boyfriend home.” 

They each have a beer to celebrate Cas’s newfound freedom once they get home, and Dean promises to take Cas out tomorrow for a nice meal to celebrate more formally. They veg in front of the TV for a little while, but when Cas starts kissing his neck and suggests in his sex voice that they head upstairs, Dean’s more than happy to oblige. 

Cas strikes as soon as they get into the bedroom, rendering Dean breathless right off the bat with hot, passionate kisses and a heavy hand palming his cock. He plumps up immediately, and when Cas slides his hand into his pants and wraps it around his bare skin, Dean goes from half-hard to fully hard within seconds. 

Cas demonstrates that he knows exactly how best to touch him now, and combined with Cas’s mouth drifting down his chest to work at his nipples over his shirt, Cas has him teetering on the edge in minutes and Dean hasn’t even gotten a hand on Cas yet. 

“Hey, slow down,” Dean urges him. He pulls Cas’s hand out of his pants and slides his hands up over Cas’s chest and around his shoulders. “We’ve got time, and I wanna make you feel good, too.” He kisses him gently, a few drawn-out but chaste kisses that are filled with love and not just desire. Cas melts under his touch, humming happily against his lips and licking between them. 

This is a much more agreeable pace for Dean, so when Cas starts walking him back towards the bed, he goes without complaint. They both lose their pants before they get on the bed, and then Dean’s on his back with Cas’s boxer-clad cock grinding along his own. He gets his hands up the back of Cas’s shirt, groaning at the flex of muscle beneath his hands as Cas moves on top of him. “So hot, Cas,” he groans. “Love your back.”

“Dean,” Cas says quietly, kissing his lips a handful of times before he continues. “What do you want?”

“Anything. Anything you’re ready to give me,” Dean says honestly. “I’m all in.”

Cas’s teeth work his bottom lip for a few seconds before he asks, “Do you prefer top or bottom?”

“Fuck,” Dean breathes before his filter can kick in. Cas grins, like he knows exactly how eager Dean is. “Either. I just wanna be with you. Whatever you want, babe.”

Cas dips his head and pecks Dean’s lips. “Can I fuck you?” Dean nods his head vigorously as he wills his body not to get too over excited. “Can I leave my shirt on?”

His heart sinks, but he told Cas he would be okay with what he needs to do and he meant it. He just wants to be really sure this is how Cas wants it to happen for the first time. He lifts his hand to brush his fingers through Cas’s hair, wanting him to know without a single doubt that he loves him exactly the way he is. “I’m okay with it as long as I can still touch you, but are you sure this is how you want to do this?”

Cas’s eyes dull a little, and before he even speaks, Dean knows he’s hit the nail on the head. “I know I want to be with you.”

“I want to be with you, too,” Dean assures him. “So bad, Cas. But I don’t want you looking back at this in a couple of months wishing you waited until you were more comfortable.” 

Cas breathes in and out a few times as if he’s mustering up his courage, then asks, “What if... what if I try and see how I feel?”

“Are you okay with that?” Dean checks.

“I want to be,” Cas replies. “I trust you, and I believe you when you say you’re attracted to me the way I am. But if I try to take it off and can’t...”

“I won’t say a word,” he promises. “I can close my eyes or not look. You can take me from behind if you want, then I just get to feel you and not see you. Whatever you wanna do. Anything that’ll make it feel right for you, babe. Just tell me what you need.”

“I want to try. And maybe just take it off last minute.”

“Works for me, s’long as I can get handsy before that.”

Cas grins down at him. Dean relaxes when he notices Cas’s smile is bordering on cocky, which lets him know Cas is starting to get back in the right mindset. “I like when you get handsy.”

“I like getting my hands on _you,”_ Dean says back. He proves his point by running his hands down Cas’s flank and resting them on his hips. “You have some of the sexiest hips I’ve ever seen in my fucking life, and,” Dean says, pushing his hands down over the swell of Castiel’s ass, “your ass is amazing.”

Cas leans in to nip along Dean’s bottom lip, making him want to squirm with the pleasure/pain that races through him. “Can’t wait for you to fuck it someday.”

His erection, which had gone down to half-mast while they talked, quickly springs back to life. “Yeah?”

“I prefer to top,” Cas says, which Dean is exactly zero percent surprised by. “But I do like to get fucked every now and then. First though.” His hands push up Dean’s shirt, and Dean lifts his upper body so Cas can pull it up and over his head. Cas kisses along his jaw, down his neck, and across his collarbone as he keeps talking. “First I want to fuck you in every position humanly possible until I know every inch of you inside and out, and I learn exactly how to make you come so hard you can’t see straight.”

Words. Words are a thing his mouth can do. Make? Say? Well, they used to be able to, anyway. Now all he can seem to do is make some incoherent sounds he’ll deny the existence of until his dying day after this, but thankfully, Cas doesn’t seem to need a response, and he keeps traveling down his chest until he reaches his nipples. Dean’s jaw drops when Cas seals his mouth over one of them, his free hand flicking and tweaking the other until they’re both little hard nubs, throbbing and sending electric currents of desire directly to Dean’s straining cock. 

Cas doesn’t keep moving down though, he sets up camp right there, licking and sucking one nipple at a time until Dean’s breathing hard and writhing beneath him. It’s not that he’s not enjoying this, but it’s been _so long_ since he got fucked good and hard and he’s damn well ready. 

“Cas, come on,” Dean complains.

“I thought you said we had time?” Cas asks innocently.

“Well you can take your time fucking me then,” Dean says, “but I want you in me _yesterday.”_

Cas makes a pleased sound low in his throat. “You want it bad, don’t you?”

Dean feels absolutely no shame from how much he likes getting fucked, so he replies, “Fuck yeah, I do.”

“You love it.” Cas’s voice is low and deep, and Dean feels pinned in place by the sheer amount of heat in Cas’s eyes when he keeps talking. “Feeling a fat cock stretching you open, sliding inside of you all slick and so fucking hard.”

“Yes, _fuck,”_ Dean curses. “Come on, Cas.”

Cas’s fingers curl into the elastic band of Dean’s boxers to pull them off, exposing his rock-hard erection, but more importantly right now, his bare ass. “Where’s the lube? In here?” Dean nods as Cas reaches for the drawer in his nightstand. He pulls out a well-used bottle and the box of condoms Dean has in there, leaves the condoms on the bed, and flips the top of the bottle open to squeeze some lube onto his fingers. “How long has it been?”

Dean doesn’t even know. Was it Aaron? No, he had that random guy that one time right after they broke up. Anything since then? “I don’t know. A year, maybe a year and a half? But that doesn’t mean I can’t take it, and I don’t like lots of prep.”

“That’s good since I’m at least as eager as you are,” Cas promises. “Just tell me when you’re ready, okay?”

Dean nods, and Cas situates himself along Dean’s side, urging Dean to spread his legs nice and wide and even guiding one over Cas’s hips so he’s as open as possible. Cas doesn’t make him wait, he just slicks up his opening and pushes one finger right in. 

He hasn’t had anything inside of him since before Cas moved in, but Cas's thick finger slides in easily and the tiny bit of friction is enough to have them both releasing heavy breaths. 

“Feel good?” Cas checks, already pulling out to start fingering him. 

“Yeah.”

There is no hesitancy in the way Cas preps him. He’s skilled and obviously comfortable with what he’s doing—so much so that he’s also able to maintain a series of heated kisses that makes Dean’s head spin—and Dean doesn’t even have to break the seal of their mouths to ask for a second finger, because Cas adds it as soon as Dean’s ready. He has _huge_ fucking fingers, so the stretch of even two is intense, but Cas uses lots of lube to ease the way and locates his prostate without any difficulty. The competency and single-minded focus is incredibly hot, and as soon as both fingers are moving easily, Cas pulls out, wipes his hands clean on the sheets and pulls off his own boxers. 

“Just in case,” Cas says as he grabs for the box of condoms. Dean’s too busy watching the way Cas tears the condom open with his teeth and strokes his cock a couple of times before he rolls it on to respond. Cas looks up once he pinches the tip and asks, “How do you want to do this?”

“Like this the first time,” Dean answers. “We can get kinkier later.”

Cas grins and nods his agreement before getting between Dean’s legs. He pushes Dean’s knees apart and up, moving forward until the head of his cock is pressed snugly to Dean’s slick hole. Their eyes catch, and Dean’s thinking Cas looks nervous and unsure for the first time since they started when Cas says, “Hold your legs for me?”

Dean does so wordlessly, and his eyes follow the movement in front of him while Cas grips the back of his shirt and pulls it over his head and off his shoulders. Dean’s dying to see what he looks like, but he purposely keeps his eyes locked with Cas’s so he doesn’t freak him out. Cas smiles, wobbly but there, and then he lays himself out on top of Dean. The sensation of skin-on-skin and a hard, masculine body on top of him for the first time in so long has the beginning of a low moan spilling from between his lips, but he cuts it short when he notices Cas trembling on top of him. 

“You okay, sweetheart?”

“Overwhelmed, I think. In a good way,” Cas adds before he can ask. “I feel... I think I feel good.”

“Can I touch you?” he checks. 

Cas nods, and Dean carefully maintains eye contact while he starts by bringing his hands to Cas’s shoulders and rubbing gently down his arms and then back up. He runs his hands down his back, whispering, “You feel so good, Cas,” against his lips before he kisses him soft and sweet. “You’re so brave. Doing so good. Feel so, so good.”

“You feel good too,” Cas says quietly. He leans in to kiss Dean nice and sweet, leaving Dean speechless when he sees just how much affection is shining down at him from those big blue eyes. 

Cas gets a hand between them and lines himself up, and after one final searching look, he starts to press inside. He goes an inch at a time, pushing in and pulling out to coat his cock with lube before sinking in a little bit deeper each time. Dean has to concentrate to breathe through it, to stay loose instead of tensing to better feel the indescribable _stretch_ of his skin making way for Cas’s cock inside of him the way he wants to. 

“Fuck, that’s tight,” Cas grits out.

“Keep going,” Dean begs. 

His hands grab for Cas’s waist to keep him in place. His thumbs rest naturally on the divots of Cas’s hips and his fingertips sink into the supple flesh of Castiel’s ass when he urges him forward. He watches Cas’s jaw drop as he moves in deeper still, his bottom lip quivering through his harsh breaths as Cas forces his way through the tight muscle one endless inch at a time. It feels like Cas has been pushing in forever when he finally bottoms out with a low groan that makes Dean’s toes curl, and Cas is so fucking long that Dean can feel the head of his cock brushing against his prostate without Cas even having to try. 

“Ah-ahh, _fuck,”_ he whines, arching his back and shoving his ass down so he has a more substantial pressure where he wants it. “You’re already right fucking there.” Cas latches onto the exposed column of his throat and grinds his hips in a slow, filthy little roll that has Dean seeing stars and cursing like a sailor. _“Motherfucking_ fuck.”

Cas nibbles his way up to his ear, licking the shell and breathing hot on the damp skin in such a way that has goosebumps riding the shiver that wracks through his body. 

“And I haven’t even moved yet.” Cas’s voice manages to come out sounding teasing and promising at the same time, and considering Dean’s already lit up with pleasure, he’s inclined to let Cas deliver on that whenever the hell he wants to. 

“Your dick’s so big you don’t have to.”

“Sweet talker.”

Dean huffs a laugh, and Cas’s lips catch his while they’re still stretched into a smile. Joy spreads through him as Cas's tongue slips into his mouth. He flicks the tip of his tongue against Dean’s _just right,_ making Dean slide his hands up Cas's back and around his neck to hold him nice and close so he can do it again and again. They make out while they both get comfortable with Cas inside of him, exploring other’s bodies until Cas shifts side to side, finding leverage up on his knees, and as their lips part and their eyes meet, Cas pulls out almost entirely. 

It drags Dean’s eyes down the long expanse of Cas’s midsection, and he follows the trail of a flat stomach down past his navel to a treasure trail that will _never_ not make his mouth water, and further still, where Dean can see where _just_ the fat head of Cas’s cock remains buried in his ass. The whole thing—a decent look at Cas’s body and the visual of exactly how they’re joined together—is one of the most erotic things he’s ever seen.

“Jesus Christ that’s hot.” He lifts his eyes to Cas’s face so he doesn’t feel uncomfortable, and purposely allows his hands to climb the ladder of Cas’s ribs. He doesn’t keep any of the awe or affection out of his voice when he says, “You’re so fucking sexy, Cas.”

“And you,” Cas returns, “are the very personification of perfection, outside and in.” He circles his hips when he says _in,_ and Dean’s insides clench around nothing, wanting the rest of Cas’s cock buried inside of him where it belongs.

“Come on, Cas,” Dean urges him.

Cas smirks. “Come on what?”

Oh. Well, two can play at that game. Dean twists his lips into the most seductive smile he can muster and says, “Fuck me alre— _augh!”_

Cas slams into him in one fluid, powerful thrust that punches the rest of the word right out of him. He guides Dean’s legs around his waist and catches Dean’s lips in a searing kiss as he pulls out just to drive his cock back in. Cas sets a hurried, frantic pace right off the bat, fucking into him in short, rapid thrusts that has Cas rubbing up against his prostate almost constantly.

Dean’s brain whites out from the unbroken onslaught of pleasure. His nerve-endings feel like they’re electrocuted, and each time Cas undulates his hips and shoves his cock into him a little bit harder, it feels even better than the time before. He’s immobilized by so much sensation, and although he prides himself on being a generous and active lover, he can hardly do more than grapple at Cas’s skin as Cas rocks into him over and over again. All motor function is lost from the sinful assault on his prostate, causing him to break their kisses more than he can maintain them, but Cas’s mouth never travels far. It’s busy sucking on or scraping along his bottom lip, dropping feather-light kisses to the corner of his mouth, or blazing hot, sloppy trails of fire across his jaw and back to his ear. 

“You’re taking it so well,” Cas says. His low voice vibrates against the shell of Dean’s ear, setting off another round of goosebumps over his skin. “So greedy for it.”

“Want it,” Dean whines nonsensically. 

“How do you want it?”

 _“Harder.”_ He can’t even begin to convince himself that didn’t come out sounding like a greedy, desperate little whine, but he can’t find it in him to be ashamed, either.

He would swear Cas’s voice is an octave deeper when he replies, “Harder what?”

There’s a low rumbling groan crawling up his throat before he can make the words come out. “Fuck me harder.”

Like the last time, Cas gives him exactly what he wants the second he asks for it. He cries out when Cas spears into him harder and deeper, connecting dead-on with his prostate and making precum dribble onto his stomach. “Like that?”

Dean takes pride in how only a few quick thrusts can already have Cas’s voice sounding tighter and rougher, and the thought has his hands becoming unglued. He gets two hands full of Cas’s ass and squeezes hard enough to make Cas bite down on his neck in retaliation. “Fuck, _yes,_ like that.”

The confirmation seems to spur Cas on, because Cas falls to his elbows and plasters his body on top of Dean’s, not leaving an inch of space between them anywhere he can help it. He starts fucking into him like a mad man, hips pistoning in and out in a blur of tanned skin. Dean’s so overwhelmed with pleasure he only has a vague impression of bruising kisses and bodies sweating while he’s driven faster and faster to the edge, and when Cas’s hips line up with his and Dean feels the first slick drag of his leaking cock against Cas’s soft stomach, he can suddenly feel everything inside of him tightening at his core.

“F-fuck.” Cas mouths a hungry moan into the skin of Dean’s neck just beneath his Adam’s apple, surely feeling the way it’s bobbing and struggling as Dean tries to drag in something other than a dry, ragged, unsatisfying breath. The next thrust provides more friction, no less arousing than the last, and he hopes that the way his fingernails are digging into Cas’s flesh and the way his breaths continue to rasp out of him faster and faster tell Cas that he’s almost there, because Dean’s toes curl and his abs tighten as Cas rocks his hips a third time, and he’s sure he couldn’t produce a consonant if somebody offered him a million dollars for one. “Augh! _Augh!_ Oh, I—I—”

“That’s it,” Cas coaxes him, his voice rough and shaky. “Let it happen. Let me see you come, gorgeous. Let me feel you fall apart for me.” Rough as sandpaper, Cas damn near growls, “Come for me.” 

_That,_ combined with a particularly deep plunge of Cas’s cock inside him has him hurtling towards the edge, so close he can taste it, so desperate and eager to come that when Cas grinds against his prostate one more time, he can’t help it. He’s done. He throws his head back in ecstasy as he shoots hot and hard between them with a broken cry. He can feel his ass clenching hard around Cas’s cock as his orgasm rips through his system and streaks of wetness squirt onto his overheated skin.

He hears a muffled sound from Cas a split second before he tenses, too, and then Cas buries himself to the hilt as he hides his face in Dean’s neck and shudders his way through his own orgasm. Knowing that Cas is likely feeling every bit as good as he is only elongates his own pleasure, and he feels warm and satisfied in every sense of the word as his body begins to go lax. He strokes up and down Cas’s sweaty back and turns his head to press a kiss to his temple and the side of his neck. 

“Jesus,” Dean sighs happily. He wraps his arms around Cas and holds him close, nuzzling into the damp hair just above his ear. “That was amazing.”

Cas hums his agreement, his palms skirting the backs of Dean’s thighs at the same time Dean feels dry lips start a string of kisses from his shoulder to his neck. Cas pushes himself back up to his elbows, aiming a smug little smile down at Dean before he leans in to catch his lips in a quick kiss. 

“You were amazing,” Cas says.

Dean smiles, but replies, “I didn’t do anything.”

“Well, you _felt_ amazing then.” Cas dips his head to seal their lips together once more, soft and so damn sweet, and Dean brushes his fingers through Cas’s hair and down to cup the back of his neck. Their faces are only inches apart when the kiss comes to an end, and they fall into prolonged, indulgent eye contact while Dean continues to pet through the hair at the back of Cas’s neck. His heart feels ready to burst, so fucking full with how much he loves the man on top of him he doesn’t know how he hasn’t already let it slip a hundred different times. “You are amazing,” Cas says quietly. “And I—” He stops, breathes deep, and continues with, “I’ve never felt like this before.”

Dean doesn’t even try to hide the dopey smile on his face. “It was that good huh?”

Cas laughs quietly, and he’s smiling back when he pushes himself up and away. Dean averts his eyes when Cas gets a hand between them and pulls out, then ties and tosses the condom. He watches when Cas grabs Dean’s t-shirt, and for a second he thinks that he’s going to wipe down his stomach with it, but instead, Cas pulls it over his head and snuggles up to Dean’s side. 

“Wearin’ my clothes now?” Dean asks smugly. He makes sure to wrap his arm around Cas and smooth his hand down his back, hoping Cas knows without him having to say it that he’s proud of him for taking it off at all.

“You smell better than I do,” Cas replies.

“Agree to disagree.”

“We should probably get tested,” Cas says next.

He wasn’t expecting him to say it just then, but Dean agrees. “Yeah, okay.”

“I haven’t been with anybody since Daphne and I have no reason to think I have anything, but I’ve slept in a lot of less than sanitary places in my day.”

“Never again, Cas,” Dean promises with a kiss to the top of his head. “I’ll see if I can make us appointments together if you want.”

“That would be much more preferable than going by myself. Thank you.”

“Of course.”

“And thank you for before, too,” he says more quietly. “For not making a big deal out of my shirt.”

“You don’t have to thank me for respecting you,” Dean says gently. “Besides that, you look hot as fuck in my shirt.”

“It’s too big,” Cas points out.

“Yeah, but now I can see more of your neck and collarbone,” Dean says, touching the exposed skin with his fingers. “And believe me, that’s a look for you.”

Cas’s fingers trace shy little circles on Dean’s chest. “I do believe you.”

“But you don’t agree.”

Cas seems to deflate against him a little bit, but he tilts his head up so that Dean can see his face. “One step at a time?”

God, he loves him. 

“One step at a time.”


	7. Chapter 7

Dean says it out loud for the first time in the fall. 

They’ve been doing all of the stereotypical couple things that come with the cooler weather. They’ve been to the Outdoor Fall Stroll on 9th Street, they’ve been apple picking, they went to a drive-in movie (which was actually one of the coolest things ever), they went to a corn maze, and even did a freaking picnic with an actual wicker basket and checkered blanket (thanks to Cas).

Today they’re going to the pumpkin patch to pick a couple of pumpkins. Cas wants to try his hand at making pumpkin pie, and with the other one, they’re going to carve a Jack-O-Lantern. Unfortunately, Dean regrets his decision to give this a shot the second they get out of the car. There are kids—running, screaming, yelling, and crying— _everywhere._

He doesn’t even have to say anything before Cas grabs his hand to reassure him. “Calm down. It won’t be so bad once we get out of such a busy area.”

Dean huffs his disbelief. “Do you know how many times I’m going to have to pretend not to hear well-meaning mothers say, ‘Look, there’s two boys in love just like mommy and daddy. Love is love, right?’”

Cas laughs but says, “Would you rather the alternative?”

“I’d rather people leave us the hell alone the same way they would any straight couple.”

“Do you really expect me to believe people didn’t stare at you or make comments under their breath when you were with a woman?”

Cas has him there, but still. “That’s not the point.”

“It’s a good thing I think you’re adorable when you’re grouchy.”

Dean gives his hand a little squeeze in apology for his mood, and they wait in line to buy their tickets mostly in silence. By the time they’ve reached the front, Dean’s seen Cas read the big sign with all the activities on it at least a dozen times, so he’s not the least bit surprised when he turns those baby blues on him. 

“Can we do the wagon ride and the bonfire while we’re here? And the pumpkin decorating?”

He hasn’t figured out how to say no to that look yet, so he says, “Yeah, yeah.”

He really can’t complain about the wagon ride when Cas lets his head fall onto his shoulder with their hands cradled in his lap (okay, he _could,_ because some kid with fucking ants in his pants kicks him no less than a dozen times on the short ride to the bonfire), and he has to admit the scenery with all the green fields is pretty nice. 

He actually enjoys the bonfire, and at one point, he takes a big breath in through his nose and declares, “Best scent in the world.”

“Burning wood?”

“Bonfire,” Dean confirms. “Don’t you love it?”

“It’s alright. I like the way you smell fresh out of the shower better, though.”

Dean thinks about how many times he’s breathed in Cas’s scent the same way he just did the bonfire and relents, “Okay, second best scent in the world.”

Once he’s eaten his fill of free marshmallows (“Dean, seriously? How many are you going to eat?” Dean does his best Joey impression and replies, “Here’s where I win all my money back.” “You didn’t even pay!”) they follow the arrows nailed onto the trees and go for a little walk through the bush that leads to a playground for kids. They go to hightail it out of there pretty quick but get distracted by a tire swing. They take a couple of pictures of each other and a selfie, and when a younger woman asks if they want her to take a picture of them together, Dean goes with it and hands his phone over. 

They end up with the best photo they’ve ever had taken of them, and Dean has to admit maybe the younger generation isn’t all that bad when he has a spring in his step as they keep on walking through the field back to the wagon. The wagon drops them off outside of yet another corn maze, but Dean actually likes this part, so he pulls Cas to the side and waits for everybody else to be far enough ahead that they can figure it out on their own.

Cas must take his enthusiasm as a change of heart, because he sure as hell thanks him for it once they’re in the middle of the maze. He sees Cas look both ways and is wondering what he’s looking for when he’s suddenly being pushed into the corner of a dead-end. Cas is smiling when he backs him right up against the fencepost, but when he grabs Dean by the front of his leather jacket and hauls him in until their lips crash together in a searing kiss, it’s no longer funny. He and Cas have shared a thousand kisses by now—short, quick pecks on the lips, the ones that start small and build and build until you can’t tell one from the next, and the kind that are meant to get his blood pumping and drag his mind straight to the gutter—and he knows exactly what Cas is going for when he shoves his tongue into his mouth and curls the tip around his. His dick perks up automatically, and as soon as he realizes _Cas knows_ what it means to kiss him like this, it gets even harder. _Fuck,_ maybe Cas wants him to get hard, maybe he wants to drop down on his knees and swallow him down right here. 

He groans at the very thought, and Cas takes it as an invitation to palm over his burgeoning erection before a big, warm hand slides inside his pants and takes him into his grasp. 

Dean breaks their kiss with a surprised gasp—he never _really_ thought Cas was going to do it!—and when Cas starts mouthing at that spot on his earlobe he’s learned does _wild_ things to Dean’s insides, it slips out.

“Fuck, I love you.”

He only registers what exactly came out of his mouth when Cas stops moving suddenly. 

It feels like his insides are trying to rise up to make a violent journey to the outside when Cas cocks his head and says, “Did you really just tell me you loved me for the first time with my hand down your pants?”

In a split second, he realizes there’s several ways he could go with this: he could deny that’s what he said, he could say he didn’t mean it like that, or he could finally get out in the open and hope to god Cas might be stupid enough to feel the same way about him.

“To be fair, I do kinda love you _the most_ when your hand is on my dick.”

Cas doesn’t react for a solid three seconds, but then his lips twitch. “You must love me a lot then.”

That response only solidifies that he’s it for Dean, so he doesn’t hesitate at all. “You got no idea.”

Cas crams their mouths back together, solid and sure, and even if he doesn’t say it back right away, Dean figures the way Cas’s hand starts to pump his cock has gotta be a good thing, right? Cas thumbs over his head and smooths the pad down to rub the ridge on the underside, and Dean makes an undignified sound against his mouth.

Cas bites down, _hard,_ and whispers, “Keep it down, and watch my back.”

Right before he falls to his knees.

 _Yep,_ he loves him. He really, really loves him.

The excitement of Cas pulling his dick out in public, of Cas wrapping his mouth around him outside where anybody might see, of maybe getting caught and kicked out because Cas just had to have him right here right now has him ridiculously on edge before Cas can really get started. And Cas isn’t fucking around, either. He’s going full hog, giving him all his best stuff and sucking like a goddamn hoover. They hear voices twice and although Dean is careful to not even _breathe_ with them close by, his heart beats so freaking hard he’s pretty sure it’s that that’s going to give them away. Of course Cas, the fucker, rolls his balls in his palm and presses them up against his taint every time he has to be absolutely silent just to make it that much harder, and it’s the third time when he hears a woman’s near-by giggle that has him locking up and spilling down Cas’s eager throat. 

His knees damn near give out on him he comes so hard, and if it wasn’t for Cas’s hands pressed firmly against his hips, he’s not entirely sure he wouldn’t have fallen over completely. Cas sucks down every drop like they have all the time in the world, pulls himself to his feet, and tucks Dean’s softening cock back into his boxers. He does up the button and pulls up the fly all while maintaining eye contact, then leans in to kiss him, but stops right before their lips connect. 

“I love you, too,” Cas says back, and then they seal it with a kiss that Dean knows he’ll remember every day for the rest of his life.   
  
  


* * *

The next step comes on Christmas Eve, when spiked eggnog and matching Christmas onesies has them drunkenly deciding that if they’re _really_ quiet, Sam and Eileen won’t hear them if they fool around in the room next door. 

Dean’s only drunk enough to partially believe that, but the way Cas is grinding on top of him all filthy and needy has most of his worries replaced with heated kisses and groping hands. Cas strips him quickly, undoing the line of buttons from his neck down to his stomach, and then peeling the one-piece pajama set off of his shoulders and over his hips until he’s free of it completely. 

Cas flips him over onto his stomach and gets two hands on his ass, kneading and spreading his flesh until his cheeks are held apart. “God, I wish I could fuck you,” Cas says lowly.

“Why can’t you?” Dean asks.

“I didn’t bring lube to your brother’s.”

“I did,” Dean says proudly. “No way was I going a whole week without sex.”

Cas gives his ass a little slap, and says, “Get it then.”

Dean rolls off of the bed and walks over to his bag, digging deep in the side pocket until he locates the bottle and holds it up victoriously. Cas is already lying down in his spot with his cock tenting the ridiculous Christmas pajamas in an obscene way that makes Dean oddly horny for it, and he climbs on top of him to seal their mouths together while he lowers himself until he feels the shaft of Cas’s cock pressed along his crack.

They grind together for a little while, Dean loving the sensation of a hard cock between his cheeks and Cas clearly enjoying the dry friction, but he’s more than ready for it when Cas urges him onto his hands and knees so a hand can slip between his legs. Two lubed up fingers press inside of him, slicking him up and pumping in and out until Dean’s ready.

“Ride me?” Cas asks him, and Dean’s nodding eagerly as he starts to unbutton Cas’s onesie, which is when he realizes the problem and freezes.

“We can’t fuck like this.”

“The hell we can’t,” Cas argues. “You’ll just have to keep it down.”

Although he does have his doubts about that because of the current state he’s in, that’s not what he meant. “I can’t get your dick out without taking the whole thing off.” Which means all of Cas’s chest and stomach will be bare the whole time, and as much as Cas is getting better every day about leaving his shirt off for longer and longer after they have sex, he’s still never had so much of him on display while doing the deed. “Wanna switch so you’re on top?”

Cas opens his mouth to say something, then seems to change his mind. “No,” he decides. Dean blinks down at him, surprised beyond belief. “Let’s keep going.”

He doesn’t want to look a gift horse in the mouth, but at the same time, he doesn’t want to do something that’s going to make Cas uncomfortable, either. “You sure?”

“No, but I’m willing to try,” Cas says honestly. “You’ll just have to make sure I can’t think of anything but you.”

Dean grins as his fingers resume working on the buttons. “I can do that.”

“I know you can.”

Dean gets him all unbuttoned quickly, then grabs the cuff of his sleeve so Cas can pull his arms out one at a time, then he pushes the onesie all the way off. He can’t resist sliding his hands up and over Cas’s abdomen and brushing his thumbs over his nipples. He knows Cas doesn’t usually like talking about it, but his head’s buzzing enough that he says, “You’re so fucking gorgeous, Cas. Love every inch of you, sweetheart.”

“Dean.” Cas’s voice is rough and unsure, but he doesn’t sound scared, and he doesn’t have that look in his eyes that Dean knows means he’s gone too far.

“Cas, please,” Dean whispers. “Let me show you.”

Cas doesn’t say no, so Dean moves down his body and lowers his mouth to his hip bones, moving across them with his lips and tongue the same way he’s done so many times before. The difference is that this time, he can see Cas’s abs tightening with his hitched breathing when he starts on renewing the fading bruises that decorate his skin. He splays his hand wide and possessive on Cas’s belly while he sucks, teasing through the sparse hair there with his fingertips as Cas begins to writhe beneath him.

He can actually _see_ the twisting of his torso, his back arching and his chest puffing out, and Cas is so fucking sexy like this that Dean can’t resist pushing his luck. He looks up at Cas through his eyelashes as he inches his mouth up to the soft strip of skin between his pubic hair and his belly button. He starts a trail of open-mouth kisses from hip to hip, and when Cas is only breathing hard and squirming instead of asking him to stop, he goes up another inch. 

“I love you,” Dean whispers, dropping a chaste kiss to the right of his navel. “I love you so much, Cas.” He dips his tongue into his navel and sucks the surrounding skin into his mouth, teasing it with a hint of his teeth that makes Cas buck beneath him. He pushes his hands up Cas’s sides, curling his fingers around his ribs as he drags his tongue up his sternum. “You’re beautiful.” He’s never been able to touch Cas like this, to taste his skin and feel his body trembling beneath his mouth, and his heart is so fucking full that Cas is _finally_ letting him do this that he has to tell him again. He lifts his head to look him in the face and says, “I love you. I love your body. I love all of you so—so damn much.”

His eyes start to water when he sees the emotion all over Cas’s face too, and although Cas’s voice is barely more than a whisper, he says, “I love you, too.”

“You okay?”

Cas nods shakily, but insists, “Really okay.”

Dean’s smile could light up the sun. “I’m so damn proud of you.”

Then he lowers his mouth back to the golden skin he’s been wanting to sample for almost a year. At last, he gets to kiss the mole Cas has below his nipple, to lavish his pecs and collarbone with kisses, and suck his nipples into his mouth. He gets to hear the low, rumbling groan Cas makes when he closes his teeth around one pink pebbled bud, and gets to feel his breath catch when Dean goes back to dropping kisses on every inch of his skin he’s finally, _finally_ allowed to see. 

Cas isn’t thin now by any stretch of the imagination, and he hums his appreciation for the soft, golden skin as he peppers his belly with dozens and dozens of kisses. He does it all between whispers of how much he loves him, how sexy, gorgeous, and beautiful he is, how much he loves his body and loves him until his heart is so fucking full it makes his voice wobble and his eyes start to fill.

Cas has come so far, has overcome so much, and Dean’s so over-the-moon proud of him and so, _so_ in love with him he can’t possibly express the depth of it. He needs him, needs to kiss Cas and feel him inside of him, filling him in ways nobody else ever has or ever will be able to. He rises up to his knees and straddles him, but leans in and kisses him with as much emotion as he possibly can before he does anything else, wanting Cas to know without a doubt that all he feels towards him and his body and his very existence is more love than Dean ever thought he’d be capable of feeling.

When their lips part, Cas’s hands are on his face, and Cas is looking up at him with so much love that Dean would swear he can feel his heart expand and grow impossibly, incomprehensibly bigger than it was only a second ago just to make room to love Cas a little bit more. 

“Thank you,” Dean chokes out. “Thank you for trusting me, for letting me in, for letting me show you just how fucking perfect you are.”

“I’m not perfect,” Cas argues, but his eyes are glistening and he seems every bit as lost in Dean as Dean is in him.

 _“You are,”_ he promises, his heart in his throat and tears in his eyes. “You are to me, Cas. I swear to god. You’re so fucking perfect.”

Cas rises up to kiss him again, a whimper leaving his throat as his lips part Dean’s, and Dean’s suddenly aching for it, for the connection he feels to Cas when they’re as close as two people can possibly be. He reaches between them and guides Cas’s cock between his cheeks, and their lips never part even when Dean sits back and takes him inside of him one delicious inch at a time. He feels whole once he’s totally seated, complete with Cas tending to his needs in every way possible, and he’s so chock-full of everything _Cas_ that he can’t possibly keep a hold on it all.

Cas’s hands move down to his hips, and together, they start moving in a synchronized rhythm even as the first tear spills over and rolls down his cheek. He ignores it, far too lost in the sensation of Cas so hard and long, sliding in and out seamlessly as Dean rises and falls on top of him. Each time he takes Cas’s cock in until his ass is flush with the bowl of Cas’s hips, he stops to grind down, rotating his hips _just so_ to force the head of Cas’s cock to connect with his prostate. Sparks of pleasure explode inside of him every time, but he keeps his lips sealed to Cas’s, his eyes squeezed tightly closed to try to hold in the second and third teardrops that inevitably escape. 

Cas must feel them on his cheeks, because his mouth leaves Dean’s just to travel across his face, erasing one tear track at a time with kiss after kiss that makes it suddenly impossible to catch his breath. Each one stutters out of him, harsher than the last until Cas brings his hands up to cradle his face. The forced eye contact settles him, as does the soft kiss to his forehead, and he feels more centered when Cas’s hands smooth down his neck, over his shoulders and arms until their hands are palm to palm. Their fingers slide together in the space between their bodies, and Dean uses the leverage to help him really start moving. He drops his eyes to memorize the sight of Cas’s biceps bulging as he helps hold Dean’s weight, but the faster pace draws a groan from Cas that he can’t ignore.

Dean smiles through a quiet, “Shh.”

Cas smiles back, but whispers, “You’re amazing. You feel so good, and I—I love you so much.”

“Love you,” Dean says in return, breathless from the constant motion. “Always gonna love you so damn much, Cas.”

“Dean,” he says brokenly, the awe in his voice reminding Dean that he’s purposely never mentioned the words _always_ or _forever_ for a reason. “I’m yours. Always.”

Hearing that strikes a peculiar chord inside of him, something indescribable he’s never felt before, and it drives him to undulate his hips just a little bit faster, a little bit dirtier. He watches Cas’s jaw as it comes unhinged and purposely clenches around him, just to hear the strangled sounding, _“Dean.”_

Dean bites down on his bottom lip, knowing exactly what that tone of voice means and feeling anticipation race through him at the thought. Cas is close, and any minute now, Dean’s going to do something that pushes him over the edge, and Dean’s going to get to watch him come. He’s going to track the flush as it spreads all the way down Cas’s neck to his chest, he’s gonna see his chest struggling to expand while Cas tries and fails to get a decent breath, and he’s going to watch his abs tense right before he loses it and comes deep inside of him. It’s gonna set him off, like it always does, and for the first time, Dean’s going to see ropes of his own cum fall onto Cas’s golden skin.

The very idea gets him worked up enough that all it takes is for him to slam down a handful more times, angling Cas’s cock deep and hard exactly where he needs it in order to have him locking up and spilling over Cas’s stomach with a wordless shout of pleasure. He comes twice as hard after watching his cum spill onto Cas’s skin for the first time, and he shoots so hard the second time it almost reaches Cas’s neck. 

Cas suddenly jackknifes beneath him, making him lose his balance and damn near bucking him off completely when he thrusts up hard and so sharp, and Dean only _just_ manages to catch himself on Cas’s shoulders as Cas releases a strangled sound as he comes inside of him. Cas’s hands grip onto Dean’s hips like two vices, and he forces him to keep rocking on top of him while Cas continues to drive into him until he’s completely spent.

Only then does Cas allow Dean to collapse bonelessly onto his chest. He presses his forehead under Cas’s chin, greedily dragging in the big breaths he needs in order to clear his vision, and hums low in his throat when Cas’s arms come around him. Cas has cum all over his stomach and chest, but since Dean doesn’t know how long he’s going to have before Cas asks him to pass him his pajamas again, he ignores it in favor of running his hand over as much of his bare body as he can. 

He doesn’t want to forget what the little mole beneath his nipple looks like, or how he has freckles on his stomach and his tanned skin makes Dean look pale in comparison, so he memorizes it all, not even blinking until he can’t help it. To his utter surprise, Cas doesn’t budge, not even when his cock softens so much that Dean’s forced to lift off of him to let him slip out. Dean pushes his luck and stretches himself out on top of him, soaking up the sensation of having all of Cas naked and sated pressed up against him, absolutely awed by the simple intimacy of their flaccid cocks nestled together with nothing between them. But Dean doesn’t dare to say a word, doesn’t move a muscle, just lies there and enjoys every second he can get. 

Not surprisingly, it’s Cas who breaks the silence. “It’s after midnight,” he whispers. “Merry Christmas, Dean.”

And those three words are all it takes for it to suddenly occur to Dean that although he hasn’t had the chance to open any of the presents waiting under the tree that Cas has been taunting him with for weeks, he has everything he’s ever wanted right here in this room.

“Merry Christmas, babe.”  
  
  


* * *

  
  
Seeing Cas in his trench coat, signature blue tie, and a full suit is something Dean’s pretty sure will never _not_ take his breath away. He looks absolutely incredible, leaning back against Dean’s car with his hands in his pockets and all the confidence in the world displayed in the wide set of his shoulders and his ankles crossed. He should be freezing his ass off in a thin little jacket since it’s a frigid day in February, but he looks completely comfortable.

“Excuse me, sir,” Dean says, hitching his bag more securely on his shoulder as he approaches him. “But if my boyfriend sees a sharp looking guy like you leaning on my car, I’m gonna have a lotta explainin’ to do.”

Cas merely raises his eyebrows. “All it takes is a new suit and suddenly I don’t look like myself anymore?”

“I don’t know, do you always radiate big _suck my dick_ energy when you get a new suit? ‘Cause that’s what’s really throwing me off.”

“Why don’t you come here and find out,” Cas says, gesturing with his head for Dean to come closer. 

Dean lets his bag fall to the ground in the parking garage and leans one elbow on the car roof next to him, effectively boxing Cas in with his body and one hand on his hip. He gives him a blatant once over and asks, “Why are you all dressed up anyway? Did I forget a special occasion or something?”  
  
“I just came from an interview.”

Dean blinks in surprise. “An interview? For what?”

“Sam got me an interview for an accounting position at Shurley & Associates, and I nailed it. They offered me the job on the spot. I start in two weeks.”

Dean’s jaw drops. “You—you got the job!?”  
  
Cas breaks out in a face-cracking smile and nods enthusiastically. “Salary starts at 55 thousand a year. Three weeks of vacation, an incredible benefits package, and a 401k.”

“What the hell, Cas! That’s—holy shit—that’s _amazing!_ Congratulations!”

He wraps his arms around Cas’s neck and pulls him in for a tight hug, torn somewhere between being so fucking happy for Cas and a little heartbroken for himself now that he knows that Cas (and Sam!) never even told him Cas had an interview. He shakes the thought away and decides to concentrate on the good, to celebrate with Cas and tell him how damn proud he is, and he kisses him on the cheek before he pulls back enough to plant a smacking kiss right on his lips. “I’m so damn happy for you, babe.”

“Thanks,” Cas says with a smile full of disbelief. “I’m pretty damn happy for me, too.”  
  
“You wanna go eat somewhere? You can tell me all about it.”

“Let’s order in. I’d much rather be at home with you.”

“Sounds good to me.”

They hold hands the whole drive home, and though Dean doesn’t ask any of the dozens of questions running through his mind, he can tell that Cas knows he’s distracted. They get home and both change into sweats and the joke hoodies they got each other for Christmas without discussing it first, then use Uber Eats to order in several appetizers they plan to eat their way through one at a time with a couple of beers.

Once their feet are up and the TV is on, Cas launches into the story of how a client of Sam’s mentioned his office was looking to hire a couple of new guys since some older partners were getting ready to retire. Since Sam knew from working with the guy that his office is very forward-thinking when it comes to mental health, he mentioned Cas’s name, and the guy told him to have Cas send his resume directly to him.

“Nora wrote a glowing letter of recommendation, saying how quickly I rose up to manager and how I’ve never missed a shift, never called in sick, and how she’s never had anybody train new staff as quickly and thoroughly as I have,” Cas tells him. “I don’t know if that helped, or if Sam putting a good word in for me did it, but they never even asked about the gap on my resume, and I think probably because of that, I was as relaxed as possible and managed to have good, clear answers for all of the questions. When he asked me about my salary expectations I just halved what I used to make, knowing that it was still going to be way more than I was making at the Gas N Sip, and he asked me to wait outside while he conferred with his colleagues. Less than five minutes later, he calls me back in with a contract in hand, offering me a job.”

“Just like that?”

“They said they were thrilled with the extensive work experience I bring to the table and that they couldn’t pass up such a good opportunity. Sam said I probably could have asked for more money and they would’ve given it to me, but I’m happy with what they offered.”

“You told Sam you got the job before me?”  
  
“I sent him a copy of the contract to make sure everything was solid, yeah. I wanted to make sure I had all my ducks in a row before I got your hopes up.”

“I get that,” Dean says, trying to swallow down the hurt he feels. “I just wish I would’ve known so I could’ve wished you luck or whatever before you went today. Not that you needed it, I guess.”

Not that Cas needed him at all.

Cas must pick up on what he doesn’t say though, because he says, “Dean,” and waits for Dean to look up to make eye contact. “You know I never could have done this without you.”

Dean huffs a humorless laugh. “You _did_ do it all without me.”

“No, I did it all _because_ of you. Because even when I broke in and was wasting away in your basement, you gave me a chance to turn my life around. You believed in me when you had no reason to, and everything I’ve accomplished since the day you asked me to come upstairs is because you made me want to be a better man. A man worthy of you—the kindest, sweetest, most caring person I’ve ever met.”

“You’ve always been worthy of me, Cas. But because of who you are, not ‘cause of your job.”

“You’re upset that I didn’t tell you about the interview,” Cas says plainly. 

“It’s kinda upsetting that I didn’t know you were going through something so huge today, yeah,” Dean admits. 

“Because then you couldn’t be the knight in shining armor?” Cas asks.

“No,” Dean disagrees, hurt by the implication. When Cas raises an eyebrow in disbelief, he elaborates, “I don’t _want_ to be your knight in shining armor. Well, no,” he corrects. “If you need one, then yeah, I wanna be that person for you. But that’s not what this is.”

“Explain it to me then,” Cas says patiently. 

“It’s not that I want you to need me to do this kinda thing, because I swear, I think it’s awesome that you’re confident enough to buy a new suit and send in a resume and fucking nail an interview without any support from me. Hell, I remember when you could barely even lift your head to look at me when we talked, and now you’re out there wearing that suit like a fucking boss, and there ain’t even words to tell you how proud I am of you.”

Cas is watching him carefully, like he’s waiting for the other shoe to drop, and Dean shakes his head before he lets the rest out.

“But I also... well, I love you, and I dunno—maybe I think of us as more of a unit than you do or something—but I thought you wanted to share all the high-stress, keep-you-awake-at-night, I’m-so-scared-I-feel-like-I’m-gonna-crap-myself shit with me the same way I always share it with you. Not because I need you to fix it for me or you want me to fix it for you, but because we’re a team, you know? Because we’re in this together, and life’s a hell of a lot easier to take when we share the shitty parts between us instead of taking it all on ourselves.”

There’s suddenly a mile-wide ache in his chest when he considers for the first time that maybe Cas doesn’t think of them the way he does. Maybe Cas doesn’t think of them as forever the way he’s started to since Christmas. Maybe Dean’s just a stop along the way to bigger and better things for Cas.

“Fuck, never mind,” he decides. “I’m being a girl about this. You don’t have to share every aspect of your life with me just because I want to share the rest of mine with you.”

“You... want to spend the rest of your life with me?”

“I—” His mouth opens and closes as he realizes that’s what he just said. His cheeks warm up now that he’s being put on the spot, but it’s not like he’s gonna lie right to Cas’s face now that it’s come up. “I’ve been thinking about it, yeah.”

Cas licks his lips and scooches up to the edge of the couch. His hand slips into the pocket of his hoodie and he says, “So I guess if you’re being a girl about this, that would make me the guy, right?”

Dean blinks, confused by the weird turn of events. “What?”

“And if I’m the guy, that means—traditionally—I get to be the one to do this.” 

Cas slides off the couch and gets down on one knee, and it isn’t until he pulls his hand out of his hoodie with a small, wooden box inside of it that the pieces fall into place in Dean’s mind. 

“You kind of stole my thunder by giving me that big speech a few minutes ago and casually letting it slip that you want to spend the rest of your life with me, but it also took a lot of the pressure off,” Cas says with a smile. He takes Dean’s hand in his and sounds completely genuine when he says, “I only waited to tell you about my interview because it was the one thing I had left on my mental checklist of things I wanted to do before I could ask you to marry me.” 

It’s official: Dean can no longer feel his fingers where they’re twined between Cas’s. 

“I wanted to tell you about my job here, in the place where we met, where we fell in love, and where you helped me find myself again one day at a time. I wanted you to know without question that I don’t need you anymore. I am fully and completely capable of packing up the things that I’ve paid for with the money I earned from a job I secured for myself and walking out of here to not only survive on my own, but make it from here on out without any more help from you or anybody else. Do you understand that?”

Dean’s head is _spinning._ Cas is down on one knee with a ring box in his hand asking Dean if he understands that Cas no longer needs him. It’s only because of the down on one knee part that he has enough faith in Cas and in them as a couple to nod his head. 

“And now that you know that—that we both know that—I also need you to know that I _choose_ _you,_ and I always will. Not because I need you to help me survive, but because I need you to help me _live,_ to make me laugh and roll my eyes and make my heart skip a beat every time you so much as look at me. I love you, Dean, and I have never been more sure about anything as I am about you. Put me out of my misery and tell me you’ll marry me?”

He flips the top of the box open with shaking fingers to reveal a thick silver band, and in an instant, Dean can see their lives span out in front of him: years filled with laughter and amazing sex, friends and family, sweatpants and cuddling, grey hair and wrinkles, and the kind of love that never dies. 

His voice is gruff but the single tear streaming down his face softens his words, such as they are. “Fucking right I’ll marry you.”

They don’t quite get the ring in place before Cas has him pinned to the couch and their clothes start coming off, but Dean goes with it anyway. If he’s learned anything from Cas, it’s knowing without question that when it comes to the two of them, one step at a time always seems to point them in the right direction even if it doesn’t happen in the most logical sequence.

And he wouldn’t want it any other way.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading! If you enjoyed this story, please don’t forget to hit the kudos button! 
> 
> As usual, if this kind of story is something you’d like to read more of, you might also enjoy these stories by me: 
> 
> [Pride](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23206042/chapters/55554526)  
> [Hearts Never Forget](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21152708/chapters/50344244)  
> And [We Are What We Pretend To Be](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15453036/chapters/35869983).
> 
> The first chapter of a brand new fic by me is coming Monday, so keep your eyes peeled, and again, thank you so much for reading 💙


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